In crisp, intimate, and uncluttered language, award-winning and critically acclaimed poet Sharon Thesen gives us a layered meditation on energy and endings: the irrepressible energy of life; and the end of the natural world, of home, of love, youth, and safety.Thesen's talent is for catching beauty at the periphery of things — a glimpse of neighbour's yellow dress, a tube of polysporin, a blue-and-white tin awning the mind momentarily mistakes for a lake.

Thesen's voice — musical, personable, alive to joy and despair in equal measure — reminds us of the kind of spiritual yearning that can surprise any of us, even in our most mundane moments. With nods to predecessors who searched for the Ideal in the local — Frank O'Hara, Robert Creeley, S. T. Coleridge and John Berryman — The Good Bacteria is a beautiful addition to Sharon Thesen's considerable achievements. (From House of Anansi Press)