The Dolls’ House Maker’s Room sits in a house of tools and memories, the tools as much metaphors as objects, the memories laden with objects and images, with the places and events that shape what we know and what we don’t. A maven of gentle surprise, Robin Thomas’ language is supple, generous and deeply reflective; his observations sharp, quick-witted and beautifully controlled. There is a signature breadth of reference in these poems — travel, film, the absurdities of life and human history, art, mortality, loss — united by a confident, distinctive, humane voice. bats foxes planes clouds lives made and unmade revolutions tea and cake a stately moon eternal stars I wake. It’s day. You’re still not here. (from ‘Wake’)