Deer, ghosts, holes, storms, questions, voices make appearances in the poems collected in The What. The poems are driven by voice, in particular, the voice of a speaker trying and often failing to find the exact language for an experience or image. Voice and form work to express the idiomatic character of the participant and observer, the poet. Many of the poems try to explore the liminal space of shadows and edges, and to show what connects but also separates the personal and philosophical, and the terrestrial and celestial worlds. The sometimes irregular, angular and winding syntax attempts to enact the feeling and process by which moments arrive, are stepped inside of, walked around, forgotten, or remembered.