content: Paul Hoover is an experienced and successful poet having published six earlier books of award winning poetry. Totem And Shadow: New and Selected Poems continues to document his impressive talent wedded to an innate knack for memorable imagery. After Miss Graven's Remarks: Boy, my left eye cries when I see kids/play violins and things. How did they get/so young? And I can't stop my fractures/when they strike toy xylophones in a song/too sentimental, mechanical sugarplum fairies./It's brutal of them t kill me with growing up/like this, and Mrs. Pollen, who tends them,/why is she so kind under her matronly woolens?/What is so appealing in a clumsy, fuzzy/third-grader, ghostly in polyester as any/sad adult? Sure, there's no god to do it,/but they should have bright violent minds/to brace them for a while, and one tough look/keep them when Christmas isn't the mood.