Angel opens with voices from Bedlam. A demented starling, a corrupted GI, an alien planning world takeover from the bottom of the sea. A murderer, a blind man's wife seduced by a witch; colonists who rape a piano on a desert island. Part II sets them in a background of war and decay. A world where a woman keeps only her baby's head. A world it might be mad not to go mad in. Part III expresses something similar through erotic narratives of insane unworkable innocence, to which Part IV adds quirky mythic and historical perspectives. Part V suggests the previous poems have come from a Bedlam-like patient, hiding from her doctor behind invented voices. Now, apparently, we hear her voice direct. And his, describing her. At their war-frontier of other and self, doctor and patient make some kind of farewell. But who was ventriloquising whom? Is madness the angel-alien in both? Was he one of her voices? Or was she his? Ruth Padel's first collection, Summer Snow (1990), was praised for `a poignant sense of history, past intertwining with present' (Times Literary Supplement); `impressive historical poems of considerable power' (Poetry London Newsletter); `history problematised, not finished' (Sarah Maguire, The Listener). Her focus was decipherment: where does meaning flow from, who controls it? Angel too highlights history, control of meaning. It is about madness and unknowability. Its figures are opaque to each other, like the sources of their hurt. Mining history of many kinds, Angel enacts - and questions - its own case-history.