The List of Dangers

“Tight and purposeful as a fable, The List of Dangers gives us sorrows and warnings from a world imbalanced by beasts and little beauties. The images are precise as a child’s playroom—keyholes, miniature candelabra, the ‘trebly notes’ of wrens and gypsies— but perilous in their tender transformations. Maggie Smith’s rich lyric gifts produce here a poetry of balancing composure in the face of peril and pretty chance.”—David Baker, author of Midwest Eclogue“In Maggie Smith’s The List of Dangers, as in the Brothers Grimm, we learn early how hazardous life is and how eagerly our fate awaits us. In these inventive new poems, Smith borrows elements from folktales, fairy tales, and fables to remind us once again that ‘Nothing stays good for long’ and ‘No one [is] preserved.’ And just as before, we’re thrilled by each tale and tickled to death at our own imperilment.” —Kathy Fagan, author of Lip