This "praise piece to molten metal -- duplicitious, artful and harrowing -- and to its handlers" is Nor Hall's prose "character sketch" of iron and iron workers ("the people who work iron and can't keep their hands off it"). Offering a brief history, mythology and psychology of the metal ifon -- both alchemical and industrial -- IRONS IN THE FIRE is itself a passionate, inherently erotic contribution to elemental poetics. "Nor Hall has culled new flowers from old vines. The myths and their figures are familiar -- but her way of being with her symbols is fresh, bold, and especially sensitive"--James Hillman.