Kelly Cherry, who studied philosophy in graduate school at the University of Virginia, has never lost her deep love of the subject; The Retreats of Thought takes the reader through the philosophical domain. What do we really know of our world? Why is there anything at all? What is time? What is a person? What is mind? What are goodness and beauty? What does the artist seek? These and other problems are shrewdly examined in Cherry's passionate, skeptical, witty, and sometimes wry poems. Cherry places herself in the pragmatic tradition of philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce but admits to Platonic longings.