Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987-2007 is the fifth collection of poems by Rebecca McClanahan. Deep Light is not a poetry collection, if collection implies merely a gathering of similar objects. Nor is it a chronological compilation of work from the author's previous books. The poems in Deep Light have been selected and arranged to create a continuous, unified text. Like McClanahan's description of gray doves "tipping across the gravel / their shadows pumping before them," the poems move forward in an alternating dance of light and shade. In the brightest places of our world, suggests this poet, grief and loss cast their shadows. But even in the darkest places, light makes its way.