“ Hanging Fire in no way hangs its own fire. These poems scintillate with the quick firings of a highly responsive intelligence, as at home in ‘the meaning meandering river of biologic “soup”’ as on politicized streets of Leningrad. The true locale for Phyllis Webb is the suspended moment of thought’s leap into the splay/spray of language with its inevitable weight of implications. Seductive drift, critical cavorting, fine lines, and prose tempered to the rhythmic mettle of a remarkable poet’s mind.” — Daphne Marlatt