Ann Fisher-Worth’s poetry in Paradise is Jagged makes excellent reading in April, mixing memory and desire with personal reminiscence and careful observations.

I fell into the volume with a whole heart from the moment I read the first poem, “A Young Stag at Dusk,” and came upon these particular lines: “my Peace roses ride on arching stems/like moons in a lead-white sky./–My? All year, earth holds them.” It reminds me of what I so often think when I look out at the woods behind my house, at all those trees on land we say we “own,” when actually most of those trees were here before me and will remain after I’m under the earth.

The stag poem serves as a preface; there are five sections in this volume, roughly corresponding to stages of the speaker’s life. Although I like the way each poem presents particular details, the ones that reveal…