Informed Consent by Susan E. Hamilton

Susan Hamilton’s Informed Consent is a meditation on mortality—“the diagnosis of being alive”—a diagnosis the medical writer turned poet explores throughout this scrupulously-crafted debut collection. Scientific protocol yields seamlessly to dream, even hallucination. In a gorgeously imagined sequence about a patient named Martin, the domestic world insinuates itself as well, with its touchstones of memory, and its homely remedies of soup and band aids. I’m grateful for such a vividly limned world and for such a hard-nosed, compassionate poet.

–Deborah Woodard, author of Borrowed Tales