Many of the poems in Timing are hymns to the momentary and the marvelously futile: physical love, football, the preoccupations of patients on a dementia ward, fashion, and poetry itself. Several of the poems were written as performance pieces, as is the case with 'Spunk Talking' - which crescendoes to a shout at the end - were written as performance pieces. Anne Rouse is fascinated by poetry as breath, a paradigm of human vitality. Wherever that vitality begins to be suppressed, through fear, sickness, or the inroads of time, poetry marks the spot. The biggest impediment to personal liberation, however, for all its benefits, is our culture. These compelling poems show Anne Rouse responding to that dilemma both as a satirist and as a lyric poet. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.