The intimate details of daily life, the "blood and guts and heart" of the wounds and trauma of personal tragedy and love lost are Eileen Chong's bedrock which she mines with unstinting courage and honesty in this new chapbook Dark Matter. The willingness to be so open and vulnerable lends her work great strength. With heart-rending integrity resolved in a harmony of content and form, this is serious and skillfully crafted work which in its earnest exploration reaches out beyond the personal, towards a higher, life affirming and universal.