A sharp eye and an ear for rhyme threads through a life of obstacles and losses, leading finally to gratitude and a joyous peace. Deborah Smith Parker's father instilled in her a love of rhyme with a childhood filled with the rhythm of humorous verse. Her humor seasons every poem, even those larded with pain. Her memories of love and loss - long frozen - return to burden her with grief and dreams of death. She looks up in despair; ultimately it is with her stubborn optimism that she sees the stars and "heaven bowing down in awe" and weeps with gratitude. Parker's Wit Snark is a collection of poems, vivid, personal, and authentic. Parker searches for her place among other poets, and settles on her own place, where her father "woke those gods who slept inside of me." Those gods sharpened both her observations and her tongue, and she discovers a tone and rhythm in often rhyming couplets both cynical and vulnerable. A side eye to Los Angelenos who dare to move away reverses to a deeper nostalgia and homesickness for the deep black soil and flowers after bitter winters. I want to go home and dig my bare feet and hands in deep black soil that grows corn and alfalfa in the humid sunshine near rich arrays of lilacs, wild violets, and swaths of Queen Anne's lace that only briefly bloom between the bitter winters. Surviving love, growing old, and the darkness of loss takes a couple of dogs to catch what spills off the tables, while contemplating her mortality brings back the memory of starlight over a long forgotten graveyard. With Billy Collins' light touch of whimsy and the bite of modern sarcasm, Deborah Parker's poems speak unflinchingly to hidden truths with a voice echoing resilience and ultimately, joy.