The archetypal elements in Set Pieces of the Feminine float just below the surface. The book's gang of players, many of them men, who as the protagonist in "Love as Calligraphy" moves "roughly to her sex" but is "slowed by a voice/cautioning him that the sweet/path is through the pictographs/climbing from her low hem/to her girdled neck." Poetry is the language of slowing down, moving inside and staying with the image. This book does just that.