After the Afterlife explores the zone between language and spirit. It is a book of inner and outer boundaries: of blockades, of tunnels, of wormholes. Where does our consciousness come from, and where is it going, if anywhere? With a nimble blend of wit, whimsy, and erudition, Hummer’s poems assay the border that the shaman is forced to cross to wrestle with the gods, which is the same border the mystic yearns to broach, and the ordinary human stumbles over while doing laundry or making lunch—where questions of identity melt in the white heat of Being: which is like trying to teach The cat to waltz, so much awkwardness, so many tender advances, and I’m shocked when it actually learns, When it minces toward me in a tiny cocktail gown, offering a martini, asking for this dance, insisting on hearing me refuse To reply, debating all along, in the chorus of its interior mewing, who are you really, peculiar animal, who taught you to call you you.