The first part of Erica Funkhouser's SURE SHOT comprises 26 lyric poems of surpassing tenderness. Refusing to observe her world complacently, she brings a tough precision and richness of emotion to family life and the relations of friends and lovers. The inventiveness and humor of these poems are rare in contemporary poetry. The second part of SURE SHOT consists of poetic monologues that reconsider America through the eyes of three nineteenth—century American women—Sacajawea, Louisa May Alcott, and Annie Oakley. These dramatic poems explore both the inner worlds of these three extraordinary women and their responses to the central events of the century in which they lived.