After completing his first collection of poems, Accidental Monsters, in six months, Eric Basso immediately began Umbra, which he finished on the eve of his thirtieth birthday. It is a poet's giant notebook, a laboratory for almost daily experiment with form and image. Many of the poems here read as extended haiku, others record fleeting visions, fluctuating states of mind, dwarfed mysteries of intrigue and sudden loss, brief comedies, or simply moments of heightened perception, all fixed like flies in amber. In this early collection, Basso unabashedly offers the reader poems written without a net. For anyone who wishes to look behind the curtain, Umbra is an indispensable document.