Extending the vigorous world she created in her previous collections, Caroline Bird’s The Hat-Stand Union is a book about isolated people. Some are isolated within a couple, some in a crowd, some have actively chosen to retreat, and others are frantically trying to join forces with something, anything: a lover, a religion, a country, a cause. The poems contain more shadows now, more tones of voice, a fuller anger, and a broader love of life and language. Her imagination is inventive and bizarre; she teaches how extraordinary, dangerous, joyful, and full of surprise everyday life can be.