Like a voyage to the Portuguese islands of the title, the poems in Azores arrive at their striking and hard-won destinations over the often-treacherous waters of experience-a man mourns the fact that he cannot not mourn, a father warns his daughter about harsh contingency, an unnamed visitor violently disrupts a quiet domestic scene.

Whether the poem's backdrop is volcanic islands in the Mid-Atlantic or Manhattan Island at sunset, this book examines the forces of change in the natural world, as whether mundane or startlingly intimate.