Poetry. Selected and edited by C. D. Wright. "Besmilr wrote most of the time, most of her life, from girlhood.... The writing is odd both on the surface and below, and it never quite yields the oddness, however commonplace the subject.... Brigham describes what she sees, but resolutely shortens the distance between viewer and object by a kind of poetic notation,...her poems are her five senses. Living and dying are the time-honored themes, but very much in the act of, rather, the process of, and always with unaverted eyes. Her identification with the poor is ingenuous"—from the preface by C. D. Wright.