Winner of the Feminist Wires inaugural poetry contest, ford debuts with a fiery collection that uses language both evocatively rich and colloquially sharp and sly to capture the African American experience. Poems titled past life portrait range from the Negroes Burying Ground in Lower Manhattan, circa 1787, to the imagined thoughts of Rodney King, while the ambitious and deftly handled black, brown, and beige (a movement in three parts) echoes Duke Ellingtons symphony of the same name. (Movement Three: Beige says this/ skin a shade/ and a half past alright). Another poem series, how to get over, offers tough-love advice: unload the artillery/ of switch, shrapnel their eyes with/ bitch and fierce, drop dead// gorgeous. VERDICT Drop-dead gorgeous indeed.
-Library Journal starred review