George Bradley approaches his highly particular subjects from a perspective that's alternately microscopic and grand, and often funny. In poems such as "For the New Ark", where we meet the inhabitants of a postmodern Noah's ark -- "Cockroaches, of course, the professionals, / As well as most varieties of lice, / And indeed insects of every description" -- he breaks down our assumptions of history and the present. In the title poem, the poet stands in line at the SuperSave, teasing apart the world of the media, and showing us how our hunger for diet tips and for more coverage of Princess Diana marches along in bizarre tandem with the rustling, suggestive world of nature and the subliminal realm of the poetic imagination.The collection concludes with "How I Got in the Business", a long, rollicking poem comparing the formation of a poet today with the career of an olive farmer. Bradley satirizes the trials of the poet in the halls of "academic" verse, and contrasts this ordeal to the satisfactions of a life spent producing olive oil, all the while slyly suggesting that poetry, too, is "a nourishment, a custom, an accent. a complex and savoring essential".