These are vivid, visceral poems about coming of age in a place where the Ferris Wheel / was the tallest thing in the valley, where a boy would learn to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chickens neck / with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel. Looking back, the poet wrestles with the meaning of labor in the apple orchards and the filthy dollars wed wad into our pockets, or the rites of passage that included sinking a knife into the flank of a dead chestnut horse. . . . The poet has a gift ...
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These are vivid, visceral poems about coming of age in a place where the Ferris Wheel / was the tallest thing in the valley, where a boy would learn to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chickens neck / with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel. Looking back, the poet wrestles with the meaning of labor in the apple orchards and the filthy dollars wed wad into our pockets, or the rites of passage that included sinking a knife into the flank of a dead chestnut horse. . . . The poet has a gift for rendering his world in cinematic images: a ten-gallon hat on his head in the second grade is an upside down chandelier, . . . In short, these poems are the stuff of life itself, ugly and beautiful, wherever or whenever we happen to live it. Martn Espada
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