Midwestern Poet’s Incomplete Guide to Symbolism reads like a map through a Midwestern landscape of love, heartache, and enduring grief. Equal parts visual dictionary, cryptogram, and Rosetta Stone, these poems identify the world’s constantly shifting meaning. A deer is not just a deer. A horse is not only a horse. A drop of blood has wide-ranging implications.

In language that is both plain-spoken and image-driven, these poems capture the body in all its beauty and pain, as well as the heart in its immortal ebb and flow. From the loss of a father to the agony of miscarriage, from the dissolution of a marriage to the complexities of adult love, Anderson-Senter covers impossible ground in this memorable, courageous collection.