Jayne Marek’s In and Out of Rough Water is a moving and profound collection that transforms the wilderness into a meditation on the human condition. A western prairie morphs into dry pages of a newspaper, trees in winter describe a world where “naked meets hunger,” and sea lions on the Oregon coast teach how to “inhabit the wildness and feed from it.” The poet, who is also a photographer, held me captive in her terrifying yet thrilling landscape.