My midnight cat, Emerson, knows how to curl up with a good book on a snowy morning.

I don’t write book reviews often, and when I do, they’re usually of fiction titles. The review that follows is an exception, and it’s an exception for two reasons. First, because Between Midnight and Dawn is an imaginative collection of poetry and prose that reveals what great literature is at its core: a psalm, a cry against the darkness, a prayer. And second, because I am privileged to know the talented comp...