The opening poem of Barbara Ras's Bite Every Sorrow argues that "you can't have it all," contrary to the myth, spawned by the American dream, that you can. However, says the poem, which is titled "You Can't Have It All," you can have "the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands / gloved with green," as well as a host of other gifts the world freely gives: "You can't count on grace to pick you out of a crowd, / but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump, how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards, / until you learn about love, about sweet surrender." Though not yet as well known as Pastan, Barbara Ras has been spoken of as a poet who "accurately captures the tug of war between the quotidian and the miraculous." Bite Every...