Reviewed by: The Explosive Expert's Wife by Shara Lessley Carol Niederlander (bio) Shara Lessley. The Explosive Expert's Wife. University of Wisconsin Press, 2018. Shara Lessley's powerful, provocative book of poetry, The Explosive Expert's Wife, makes one wonder who the braver partner in this unusual marriage might be. Is it the bomb and IED expert, who works in some of the most dangerous parts of the world, or is it his poet wife, living with him in Amman, Jordan, often left alone. The two appear to love one another unreservedly, but that is only one aspect of the risk-taking lives explored in this volume. Through sometimes transcendent language and unobtrusive religious references, the poems subtly convey the wife's spiritual questioning in a troubled time. They depict her evolving understanding of herself and of random, senseless tragedy in the world as she encounters a culture that both deeply draws and sometimes profoundly distresses her. In the first of three poems entitled "The Explosive Expert's Wife," we meet the exhausted husband, coming "home from the range scorched in dirt": His nails are chewed.He enters the house without saying a word.He's jet-lagged again. He's got blast-dust the length of his forearms and hands.Back from Sa'dah, he's got sand in the shakes of his boots.He says, Sorry I'm late. Terms probably unfamiliar, like Sa'Dah, appear throughout this book and may send readers scurrying for a dictionary, but it's worth the effort. As it happens, Sa'Dah is a city in Yemen where the husband has been working. He continues his agitated talking: They're booby-trapping pizza boxes and books. They're rigging plastic cars so kids will trip the switch. They're something else, he says. Slowly, he reconnects to the more ordinary world. He gives thanks—the chicken tastes just right. The dog jumps on his lap. He strokes my arm, asks Later tonight?Napkin crumpled, he pushes back his plate— Now tell me everything, he says, About your day. How does one respond after such a devastating report? Actually, the wife's days in Amman are full of [End Page 199] experiences, sensations, and connections. In spite of suggestions in "Advice from the Predecessor's Wife" ("Gunfire means graduation, or congratulations—a wedding's / just taken place. Don't be disturbed by / the armed guards outside your apartment"), the wife is prepared to love Jordan. In "Things Green," she describes the view as her plane descends: Lodged in the Middle Eastern capital itself: green and green and green. Like fish scales. Or small sequins. Green that seemed to say, welcome. Green scattered across a country I assumed to be entirely sand and brown and taupe. "Ah, the wild figs of Jordan—what, in this world, are as sweet?" she asks. A visit to the ancient city of Petra presents a magical beauty: "A thousand candles light the Siq," she explains, and she senses DuShara, "God of the mountain, god of air … tonight a/breath, / a shape, this copper / eclipse of moths / alighting in my hair." The language is ecstatic. But much of this new world is not beautiful. She hears of "a cabdriver killed overnight: rockets misfired by Egyptian insurgents … an unidentified toddler found / wandering in Wihdat." Awaiting her husband's return, she confesses: "I can't sleep: the rain has ceased (or what I hear/as rain). It won't be long. Two / more days. I think of purgatory—bright / magnesium flare—seven angels strung in a tree. / This morning a woman begging outside / Jounia Pharmacy." Learning Arabic, she wonders: "How to ask What place is this? Which street?" adding, "In English/tourist sounds like terrorist, terrorist tourist." When the teacher asks what hour it is, she insists (in Arabic, we assume), "At the market I drank fresh juice." A comic confusion sometimes reigns, but other experiences are not funny. "The Ugly American" describes a group of boys who beat a female donkey in heat "with sticks and switches and clods / of dirt, laughing at her … baiting their donkeys to mount her." The poem's narrator sees "a woman, very pregnant...