Anna Rabinowitz gives us language at a height and experience at a depth that the whole art suddenly appears as a plinth on the plain of American letters.-Molly Peacock In this probing exploration of motherhood, one of our most imaginative contemporary poets cuts through the pieties to the human issues spiraling around the Annunciation and the Virgin Mary. This is not a religious book by any means. Instead, we see a new slant on freedom, subjugation, and the mother-child relationship illuminated by interconnected fragments, lyrics, multiple choice questions, argument, and ancient texts. The Wanton Sublime rewards with formal invention and linguistic brilliance-blissful marriages of form and content. WHO/WHAT IS IT COMES? Out of a vast silence, a spring spray, a drench of dew, all so still into the cave of her body? For mother read lover For like dew in April/That falleth on the flower read like dew in April/That falleth to de-flower String theorists concede that their equations are approximations to an unknown theory they call M-theory standing for matrix, magic, mystery of mother as in mother of all theories as in mother of us all Anna Rabinowitz's volumes of poetry include Darkling, finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Best Poetry Book of 2001 Award, and At the Site of Inside Out, winner of the Juniper Prize. A former NEA Arts Fellow, she has published widely in such journals as Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, The Paris Review, and Best American Poetry 1989,