Lucinda Roy makes a living, breathing reality of women's history. Her poems compel us into the world she envisions, whether through the eyes of a slave or the eyes of a contemporary woman remembering Africa, remembering her dead mother, remembering nights of passionate love. And in the end the poems reveal how all these worlds are inevitably connected - how the slave, Lucy, still walks down the grand staircase of the plantation mansion, and how the poet's mother is still close by, waiting to be found.

The work combines a seemingly effortless craft with an attention to detail that expands into unusual insights about the larger world. The poet excels at finding the uniquely personal image; even the tortoise, Albert, who was bombed during the London Blitz, becomes a potent symbol. "All I can offer now is resistance/to created myth, and sign, and metaphor," she says. Indeed, her poems, beautiful as they are, go far beyond metaphor to grapple with the very substance of life.