Shanna Compton has managed to write poems that are utterly of the moment—“Oh vomitous intimacy!”— while harkening back to archetype, to the timeless strangeness of the natural world, imagination’s source: “the river/ the gold-green blur of trees,” steadying, sweet, a “clear rivulet of water across the sandy waste.” This collection met my thirst right where it lives. “Fellow navigators,” I urge you to read it. —Diane Seuss

The cover of (CREATURE SOUNDS FADE) by Shanna Compton, featuring a painting of a wolf in ochre, pink, black, and gray against a pale blue-gray background. The title and author name are styled in semi-opaque black boxes and yellow monospace type, in the manner of Closed Captions, which are a theme.