The Transit of Venus

Susan Firer, The Backwaters Press, 2016

Firer was the city of Milwaukee’s poet laureate from 2008 to 2010 and is a UWM adjunct associate professor emeritus. This book, Firer’s sixth, offers reflections on the cosmos, loss and Firer’s favorite places in Milwaukee, particularly along the shores of Lake Michigan. Her poems cast such a broad topical net that even quagga mussels make an appearance. “The poem is a celestial sphere,” Firer writes, and she puts readers right in the center of it.