ook steeped in sound and silence. Sound in the form of song, of chaotic cacophony, and of the drone (sometimes natural, sometimes manufactured) that creates the ambient soundtrack of history and the seemingly apocalyptic present. Silence in the sense both of the void's innate quietude and of the failure to speak--of people either dumbstruck or in denial, not speaking because they cannot or will not. Throughout this collection, these sounds and intermittent silences provide the rhythm for poems that question the nature of truth and myth, and that restlessly search for meaning in a reticent universe, ultimately unwilling to take no for an answer as they strive to find an ever-elusive yes.