"Elaine Equi's narrow lines are like the rungs of a ladder that one ascends while one is descending them. It's a motion like that in Wang Wei's lines, 'Stars / float up / toward dawn,' which she quotes in her cento, 'Wang Wei's Moon.' Or, as she beautifully puts it, 'Discreetly a breeze enters the room.'"--John Ashbery Ripple Effect showcases thirty years of Elaine Equi's investigations into our cultural obsessions. Vivid, savvy, and accessible, her poems can transform almost anything--a list, a diary entry, advertising speak--into sophisticated, germane elixirs of pop culture and high art. Widely published, these poems have appeared inThe New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, and numerous volumes ofThe Best American Poetry.