Explanatory Value : Kelsay Books : 9781954353558 : 1954353553 : 05 May 2021 : In Explanatory Value, Florence Fogelin warns us not to "...blame the words; they oil our gears, / enable us to think and appreciate nonsense, / and are themselves our joy, our bane, and our salvation." But if, in her extraordinary collection, Fogelin stresses words' ultimate insufficiency, her understanding, say, of how they "delineate rocks where prayers of columbine / appear in Spring as miracles," it's precisely her recognition of language's ultimate inutility as "explanatory" that provides the volume's undeniable poignance. Whatever she may be responding to, she dramatizes her own inevitable shortcomings in assessing it, which are the failings encountered by poets from the dawn of time, and they will arouse in her brothers and sisters (whether poets or not) a clear sense of kinship. Each of those blessed and doomed to write or even speak are both moved and admiring of her valor, and of the skill and ardor