
Winner of the inaugural Jake Adam York Prize, this dazzling new collection from Sotelo (
Nonstop Godhead) seems written with opal grit. The poet highlights female subjugation to male assumptions and desires ("
I am beautiful in my harmlessness!") but offers considerable pushback, as Sotelo explores what women really want. In one poem, the speaker envisions her man fleeing "once he sees how far & wide,/ how dark & deep// this frigid female mind can go"; elsewhere, "When I'm with a man, I drag the yolk right out of him." Sensuality and resistance go hand in hand, even as Ariadne surfaces to admonish, "When a man tells you he's a monster,/ believe him."
VERDICT A moving section of this book clarifies the influences of the poet's artist father, who teaches her the meaning of art: "This one is art. This is what art looks like." She learned her lesson well.
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