Cannibal (The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry)

If you are a poet or poetry lover, you must read this book. It is actually so intense that I had to put it down for a while. The language will knock your socks off. She is a poet that's so good it is almost depressing for a poet like me who is half jealous and totally in awe. Amazing work.

yes and yes... praise her and how could she and who was i will i have been in and away and within this proper helix qua romance not for but in and before me... oh man... amen... yes and yes and yes...

The media could not be loaded.  I bought this book for one of my classes. I would have returned it, but we didn’t read this book until December, and I bought it in August in preparation for the semester (my chance to return it was at the end of september). When we finally got to the book in our schedule, I opened my copy & it’s unreadable. Whoever printed this used a shoddy printer because every fourth page is vertically half printed. Originally, I thought maybe this was the artists’ intent, but then I saw my colleagues’ copies of the book & they are fully printed.

I had the pleasure of hearing Safiya Sinclair read work from this book at the L.A. Times Book Festival this year. Her poems pull you in and you can't help but be affected. The words are rich and smooth over your soul - I couldn't wait for the next page, and the next....and the next. As a poet, I know the truth must be told. And she did that!

Reading this made me want to compare her to Walcott,With the islands in her voice. But that’s not so. She hasHer own voice, her own experiences. Distilled here through theHistory of expectations for her to sound like Walcott,To sound like Caliban.

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