Winner of the 2009 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize“There are poems which carry us clean away, transporting us into worlds as specific as the pink purse the author of Visible Heavens helps a little boy buy for his teacher, Miss Stone. Melancholy and loss, the missing of a gone mother, passion and solitude—stirringly well mixed in one potent brew of a book. Readers will feel at home here, but they’ll also feel ignited with new presences, keenly visible and invisible perceptions—`It is a gift, this light we carry in our lungs.…’ Cheers to Joanna Solfrian for a fine first book, the stunning deep breath of her voice.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, judge