PositivePlumeComing to recognize that we are all to some extent responsible for the ecological crisis is a fundamental theme in Ledger ... There are many such poems in Ledger. Hirshfield is probing and examining what it means to understand truly the situation we are in ... As troubled as these poems are, there is a counter-current running through Ledger, even in the most apocalyptic poems. Though brimming with a sense of urgency, the overall tone of the book is quiet, calm, meditative. One can almost hear thought and feeling at work in the white spaces. There is a mind constantly turning things over, stitching together what she knows, what she feels, what she recalls, and what she hopes for. She may be searching for answers and solutions to these troubles, but what the speaker achieves is a sense of the actual conditions of our existence on this planet ... A poet’s ledger offers no simple accounting of anything. Hirshfield wants to give as complete an accounting as possible of what she knows the ecological crisis is doing to the human mind, spirit, or soul.
