The Ecstatic Torture of Gratitude pushes deep into the heart of the human condition. In lush and visceral language, Battson explores loss, beauty, nature, Francis Bacon's ordered hoarding and the meaning of Martha Stewart. Jill's poems whisper like muted Miles Davis tunes melancholy in the ear, or shout their colours from the top of desert mesas. Many of the poems are a result of a collaborative process with dancers, composers, singers and painters, but above all they will live and accrete in your memory like a perfect pearl long after their first reading.