Poetry. Recalling 'Lycidas, ' in which young Milton overcomes doubts about his poetic commission to mourn the loss of Edward King, his drowned Cambridge companion, Jon Curley successfully navigates his 'own twin sense of faith and doubt' to embrace a broken world while acknowledging the Yeatsian desire for transcendence. Making his 'way by way of byways laid by better souls and coordinate congregants around me, ' REMNANT HALO is part prayer for 'mass metanoia' (or collective change of heart), part improvised 'mad madrigal, ' and part muse-ical summoning of influential voices ranging from Niedecker to Heaney to Menashe to Celan to Simone Weil to Dante to Swift to Fanny Howe to Whitman. REMNANT HALO may well be the most illuminating threnody for our annus horribilis.--Daniel Morris