Eleanor Wilner loosens the attachments of traditional figures to the old historical ground and sets them free--to suggest how it might have been otherwise, and might still be. This is the most important book yet from the acclaimed poet and MacArthur prize winner. "Otherwise is ambitious and patient, built on the spider's stratagem: the poet throws out a long tentative thread, then spins carefully outward until we see the new shape standing on air."--Carol Muske, The New York Times Book Review "In a book of poems, one is happy to find half a dozen remarkable performances--poems worth rereading and even committing to memory. In Otherwise--which is splendid from the title on--it would be hard to find half a dozen which failed to equal Wilner's stratospheric standard."--David Slavit, Seven Arts