Denise Calvetti Michaels makes family life, with its ups and downs, its twists and turns, look easy. Entwined with images and metaphors of birth blossoming forth from earth and womb, her poems reach back through her childhood and teen years in an Italian American family living in Central California to young adulthood, marriage, childbirth and grandparenthood. From Michaels I learn of mourning doves, bullfrogs and wetlands and how she experienced the Vietnam War. I learn what saguaros are, what a didgeridoo does and that there is a grass called "timothy." Michaels writes of the human condition with the passion of Nature and the rhythm of a poet forever seeking to be in touch with herself and her environment. Rustling Wrens is truly a life story in poetry, always infused with the purpose of history. -Esther Altshul Helfgott