Poetry. LADDER OF HOURS gathers poems written over four decades, a selection that teaches us how insight into everyday life can transform the world. Composed in language that is spare, almost skeletal, yet lacking nothing, LADDER OF HOURS investigates the subtleties of moments we might otherwise overlook: "the slightest sensation,/like a sleeping baby/handed from one pair of arms/into another." Interested in everything from the label on the whiskey bottle to the distance between emotion and idea, Althaus explodes "ordinary" moments of perception, revealing unexpected meaning and resonance.