The poems in Civil Twilight animate the present with a resonant sense of the past as character and as compass. The poems in the collection reveal a fascination with the possibilities that exist at every moment and the human urge to resist the inevitable and keep those possibilities open. The language of these poems is personal and precise, attuned to the mind and the ear, and, with each line, readers are reminded of the perilous nature of our existence here on earth and of the joys our lives hold.