Poetry. Women's Studies. Our core, our humanity, finds expression in language. That core is linked by a genetic thread to other living beings. It is linked to a human past that is personal, social, and universal. These reflections and relationships are counterpoint to a moment of beauty, or perhaps horror: Red surge of war news: rubble / bodies fragile, fragility understood and denied (Heart Valves). The poems in BE(LONGING) explore being, desire, and context. Belonging: set in a right or rightful place, but / originally, go along with (Nomad). There are poems in this collection about keeping company with the dead and dying, with past selves, and with essential presences, like a grown daughter, two elements bordering like states of being. // Crossing over. How to negotiate and adapt, girl to woman to mother (San Francisco Coastline). Language prevails. Nine meanings of the Latin verb interesse are a riff on the English word interest. The definition lie between or be separated prompts Outlier status, and maybe intrusions from either direction / keep apart lovers, the living from the dead (It's Not All about You.) The human body preserved after death: Nasal cavities are carvings--/ wooden frog of a cello, a lute's ivory fretwork. Process is a whimsical description of composing a poem: With an owl eye, / Aim for inevitable and whittle / With a paring knife.