Tearing into our ugliness to find beauty, tearing open the "known" to find mystery, the new and muscular voice of poet Amber West exposes our contemporary madness and looks for the cure. First book Hen & God explores the world where poetry is God, where God's "cock crows lightning," and the poem itself declares, "I am God and my ears / are the wings of the world." The scope of suffering that West addresses will take the reader's breath away, but her linguistic skill makes this an exhilarating rather than a depressing experience. Again and again she reminds us that consciousness--that art--is larger than suffering, is our redemption. In persona poems from a dizzying array if characters, West's collection becomes a portrait of life in America now, unflinching and loving and bold. Themes of gender, poverty, and family enrich the collection but by no means sum up the depth of its contents.