In Katie Ford's third collection, she sets her music into lyrics wrung from the world's dangers. Blood Lyrics is a mother's song, one seared with the knowledge that her country wages long, aching wars in which not all lives are equal. There is beauty imparted too, but it arrives at a cost: Don't say it's the beautiful / I praise,' Ford writes. 'I praise the human, / gutted and rising.' Ford's work has been described by The New York Times Book Review as 'possess(ing) the veiled brilliance of stained glass windows seen at night.''