The poetry of Fermata, like the pause or hold in music which the word signifies, conjures the audible spaces between notes and the suspended moment. As the author puts it, this is "terse but lateral but lyrical writing." Her words "are always on the threshold of becoming solid entities. In Fermata, the pitched sound, held indefinitely or paused indefinitely, is the mind feeling, the restless body, the migrations of geese or memory."