It is rare to find a volume of poetry that stares so directly and honestly at life as does Anne Whitehouse’s new collection, Blessings and Curses. As the title suggests, Whitehouse intent is to encompass both the broadest and meanest aspects of human existence as they are revealed to her in the ordinary unfolding of her days. Whitehouse refuses to deny or glaze over her own insecurities, resentments, bad choices, and jealousies, while at the same time she remains open to numerous and sudden advents of grace, those moments that cast the physical and moral world in new relief.