The poems in Shannon Tate Jonas’ The Rake slip between life and death with such ease that I cannot help but stop and listen. It’s as if the routine, the mundane, and the quotidian are the coals in the fire we’re sitting around, and each line of these poems is the terrifying possibility of nature calling out from the woods around us. The easy choice is to stay where we are, but these stunning poems urge us to step away from those moments and find out what’s waiting for us just beyond the reach of the light.