Ghost Apples, the ninth collection of poems by University of Utah distinguished professor Katharine Coles, offers not only nature-based poems that stir and satiate hunger, but also serrated verse that slices through the agency of its readers. Divided into three sections (“Animal,” “If the Older I Get the Less I Know,” “Won’t Wait”), Ghost Apples crescendos cosmologically as it progresses. Along with the particular fruit in the book’s title, as well as ethical considerations of behavior, the reader may catch palimpsestic glimpses of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.