The cover of Elise Paschen’s poetry volume depicts a waterfall descending from a rocky crag and filling a small pool surrounded by pines, under a starry sky. This illustration, by Irene Lam, captures the tone of more poems in the book than the title (*The Nightlife*) does. There is no neon to be found here, no disco balls, no cluttered streets in the wee hours. I quickly forgot the apparent inaptness of the title while immersed in the poetry itself. Intertexts range widely here, from classical mythology to Shakespeare, from Dante to Dalí. Paschen had the fortune to be immersed in a lot of high culture in her youth; her mother, Maria Tallchief, is well known for her collaborations with George Balanchine and for her successes as the first American* prima ballerina*. Not every child of a famous performing artist goes on to make meaningful art, however. Elise Paschen chose her own path into poetry. #@callout Formal exploration is a highlight in this collection Formal exploration is a highlight in this collection. “Francesca’s Circle” is a concrete poem in which the words outline the form of a circle (of Hell). Unlike many concrete poems, it maintains attention to rhythm. The repeated first and last line (and many other repetitions within) of the pantoum “The Elevated” evokes the repetitive rhythms of travel on trains and public transit. In other poems, Paschen’s eye for natural observation takes pride of place. “Visitations (North Park Village Nature Preserve),” “High Ground” and “Falls” stand out particularly for how they use diction and multisensory description to express a sense of movement. Narrative is a final vector characterizing the collection. Possibly my favorite poem in the book is “The Tree Agreement,” which deploys a complex rhyme scheme to recount a dispute with a neighbor about the value of a great elm. Paschen compounds words throughout in a manner reminiscent of Old English kennings: “leaf-hoard,” “chatter-song.” Some poems are connected by a character (mothers and wrecked houses in “The Week Before She Died” and “Parents at Rest”) or a repeated event (the tragic rescue attempts in “Closing House” and “Sinkhole”), while “Picnic Triptych” explores the same event from three different narrative perspectives. Like the missed opportunity of the collection’s title, not every poem here lands cleanly. The rhyming couplets and subject matter of “Middle Seat” fail to cohere, for example. But these misses are rare in an otherwise consistent effort, with poems that grow and deepen with repeated reading.