Clare Banks' first book, Notes on Endings, shows how grief for a dead sister threads itself through every moment of the day and how the world itself becomes its own inescapable memento mori. And yet the consoling gift of Banks' encounters with loss is that she always finds a way to lead us out of the shadows it casts and into the bright "smack of day," so we can "stand amidst the fact of plane trees."

-Michael Collier

These poems are intense and honest reports from the heart's core that juxtapose the detritus of human habitation with the beauty of the natural world. Clare Banks pays keen attention to both inner and outer worlds, tracking a life of spirit, memory, and loss in language that is assured and passionate. She shows us that although the past, along with the loved ones we leave stranded there, is irretrievable, poetry can help restore all that is gone.

-Terence Winch