Stephen Kampa�s poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. The poems also revel in the prosodic possibilities of English�s high and low registers: a twenty�one line homage to Lord Byron that turns on three rhymes (one of which is �eisegesis�); a sestina whose end words include �sentimental,� �Marseilles,� and �Martian;� sapphics on the death of Ray Charles; and intricately modulated stanzas on the 1931 Spanish�language movie version of Dracula. Despite the metaphysical seriousness, there is always an undercurrent of stylistic levity � a panoply of puns, comic rhymes, and loving misquotations of canonical literature � that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.