As its title hints, Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best insists on the links between congruous and incongruous things: the rusting moon and a katydid, Eden and Yugoslavia, blackbirds and imaginary numbers--not to mention between any two people. Jane Zwart has hoarded wonders large and small in these poems, holding them up beside life's inevitable pain and grief. Oddest & Oldest & Saddest & Best demonstrates an enduring faith in the written word to bind us closer together, in our sorrows and in our joys: "Every poem // is riddled with holes. But I am threading two tin cans' / punctured ends that you might know me yet."