Poetry. THE CATWALK WATCH, Eric Basso's second collection of poems, transports us from the terrain vague of ACCIDENTAL MONSTERS and plants us firmly in the quicksand of a vast dystopia. Poet and reader become pilgrim, prisoner, and explorer of an undiscovered country peopled by characters whose lives are governed by ritual, fable and mystery. It is a world where a poem can be taken out and walked on a leash, a microcosmos strewn with traps, where custom and absurd necessity devour sensibility: at any moment, you can slip through the cracks and be forever lost.