"With unflinching stanzas threaded through with grief's relentless lyric, The Daughter's Almanac is a masterwork, a deftly-crafted illustration of the myriad ways beauty collides with pain. Succinct and utterly memorable, these poems take hold of the heart and tug it toward an insistent light. We are washed alive in that light. We are changed by it." -Patricia Smith, 2014 Backwaters Prize Judge