These poems developed via e-mails exchanged between Tess Gallagher, while she was living in Ireland, and Lawrence Matsuda, who was writing her from Seattle. The correspondence was a competitive, responsive and lighthearted series of volleys in a style Tess characterizes as “kind of hip and comic book and jangly—prickly with antennae.”

Larry says the book is, like any dance, an invitation to lose time and “show your chops. A kind of dueling banjos.