Brooks Haxton's poetry collection responds to the natural world's beauty and cruelty while exploring human history's folly and magnificence. Haxton moves between classical references, scientific observation, family intimacy, and philosophical meditation, finding in each domain occasions for precise language and earned emotion. His technical range includes formal verse and free forms, compressed lyrics and extended sequences, translation and original composition. The collection demonstrates how a single sensibility can hold together disparate materials—the behavior of insects, the arguments of pre-Socratic philosophers, the texture of family life, the degradation of environment—through consistent attention to what words can and cannot do. Haxton writes about the people he loves with the same care he brings to natural phenomena, refusing the sentimentality that would make either seem simpler than they are. His classical training, including translations of ancient Greek poetry, gives his work historical depth without pedantry; he draws on tradition as resource rather than refuge. The title suggests both the sound of insects and the cry of grief, joining natural history to human sorrow in a phrase. Readers will find poetry that rewards close attention, that expands understanding of the world rather than simply expressing the poet's personality, and that takes seriously the obligation to make language adequate to experience.