am delivered decree:our daughter weighs seven hundred dimes,paperclips, teaspoons of sugar,this child of gramsfor which the good nurselaid out her studiesas a coin purseinto which our tiny wealth clinked,our daughter spilling almostto the floor.--from "Of a Child Early Born"In Katie Ford's third collection, she sets her music into lyrics wrung from the world's dangers.Blood Lyrics is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted, too, but it arrives at a cost: "Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise," Ford writes. "I praise the human, / gutted and rising."

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