A beautiful collection of verseboth light and dark, elegiac and affirmativefrom one of our most admired poets. The title Nothing by Design is taken from Salter's villanelle ';Complaint for Absolute Divorce,' in which we're asked to entertain the thought of a no-fault universe. The wary search for peace, personal and public, is a constant theme in poems as varied as ';Our Friends the Enemy,' about the Christmas football match between German and British soldiers in 1914; ';The Afterlife,' in which Egyptian tomb figurines labor to serve the dead; and ';Voice of America,' where Salter returns to the Saint Petersburg of her exiled friend, the late Joseph Brodsky. A section of charming light verse serves as counterpoint to another series entitled ';Bed of Letters,' in which Salter addresses the end of a long marriage. Artfully designed, with a highly intentional music, these poems movingly give form to the often unfathomable, yet very real, presence of nothingness and loss in our lives.