In X-Ray and the Pull of Poetry, Joan Sibley sees her rooster, X-Ray, as the "unerring imager/of my inner being/exact examiner/of my private wars." He was the judge and jury of the joys, mysteries and terrors of her life. Her "private wars" were many, but her poetry was a lifeline between her inner being and her outer landscape, elegant in voice and language, rich in irony and imagery, sometimes comedic, often dark in the light. Sibley mined thought and emotion in her deepest consciousness. And it was through poetry that she was able to make sense of a world in which she felt she did not belong.