Vagrants Accidentals the second fulllength collection from poet Kevin Craft is part vade mecum part songbook whose taut lines and adaptable stanzas traffic in the personal effects of emigration and estrangement exile and return In ornithology a vagrant or accidental is a bird that appears out of its natural or normal range blown off course by a storm or inadvertently introduced into a new environment by human trade Likewise Craft is interested in things taken out of contextGreek myths in the Pacific Northwest the potsherd or megalith stranded in a museum excess carbon in the atmosphere American pop songs in a Roman piazza adoptions estrangements dangerous migrations the constant shuffle of human beings from place to placeasking how we reorient ourselves in the crossfire of constant rapid global transformationOrganized into four parts the collection moves from the deeply personal to more global issues of interconnectedness In language intensely lyrical grounded in prehistory and science Craft evokes questions of family and belonging that underscore a lifetime gradually revealing the forces that shape us from the deepest reaches of time and place As some birds sing to define their territory so his poetry calls between the raggedness of daily life and our deeper yearning for coherence