Cinnamon Fire is a book of praise songs and elegies-a celebration of the dark wood of midlife of which Dante wrote, "How hard it is to say what it was like." These poems move through landscapes of illness, love, and its aftermath, finding the luminous edge where pain becomes perception. Whether tracing the stubborn pulse of desire, the desert's slow transformations, or the ache of family and loss, Sheila Black's poems look unflinchingly at what wounds and what endures. This is a book that believes in the power of attention-in staying awake to the world's terrible beauty.