Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times
By DANA JENNINGS - New York Times - Dec 19, 2011
Five poets who write in vital and original voices, from a Vietnamese-American tale spinner to an alter-ego cockroach.
In poetry — as in calling ballgames — it’s voice that makes the speaker memorable. Sure, it helps for a poet to be a master of meter, a lord of the poetic line. But that’s not why, say, we still read Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. We read him for his warm and vast-as-America hymning, and her for crabbed and cryptic messages left in a poetic bottle. Each poet here, too, writes in a vital and original voice, from a Vietnamese-American tale spinner to an alter-ego cockroach crashing headlong onto the keyboard.