Oliver de la Paz is a poet of ambition. He operates on a mythic scale, even in the microcosm. But he’s not too busy staring at the world inside his fingernail. He takes his readers into a strange new world and brings them back, whether he’s transmuting all the worst generals into imperial ants in Names Above Houses, or honeymooning with scorpions in Furious Lullaby, or staring into the abyss of a vacant bee hive on the pages of Sou’wester.