"After her mother died, poet Victoria Chang refused to write elegies. Rather, she distilled her grief during a feverish two weeks by writing scores of poetic obituaries for all she lost in the world. In 'Obit', Chang writes of "the way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking." These poems reinvent the form of newspaper obituary to both name what has died ("civility," "language," "the future," "Mother's blue dress") and the cultural...

The world seen from two set of eyes is enthralling, especially when those eyes belong to two people who share the same genes but different lives. For example, Mel Martin's view of Alaska in the 1960s and 1970s is certainly different from Elizabeth Martin's Alaska of this century. Besides, a father and daughter can look at the same thing and see two different universes. The book stretches from the past to the future, from Alaska to Russia, and from...