The poems inHummingbird Sleep move associatively between Coleman Barkss personal experience and his extensive reading weaving together a wild and eclectic range of material. A discussion of Plotinus Barkss appearance on PBS NewsHour a note Keats once left on Wordsworths mantelpiece a splinter in the heel and a quote from the Upanishads-all make their way into Barkss most recent poems which achieve intimacy and expansiveness at the same time.