In The Elegant Ghost, his fifth poetry collection, Carlomar Arcangel Daoana affirms his faith in the poetic language as a capacious medium through which the twin flames of perception and imagination intertwine. His every poem reveals a world aswarm with flickering presences and explosive phenomena, in which seas become a bolt of intensity in the mind and landscapes enact their generous spirit by expanding the rings of trees. Almost always, the works grapple with the instances of the divine—from the calcified heart of a saint to the hand of a pope to the body taut with nerve endings. Whether in odes or in elegies, whether in open forms or in his favored sonnets, Daoana sings in the octaves of angels the vagaries and verities of earthly devotions.