The poems in this bracing debut do not shy away from incomprehensible tragedies: racism, poverty, abuse, and addiction, incest, and infidelities of the body and mind. Yet the world depicted by Shawn R. Jones has moments of humor and playfulness--for example, in a litany of indelible nicknames of the members of her childhood cohort in Atlantic City. If Date of Birth is heart-wrenching in its journalistic reporting of suffering, it is also a testament...
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Poetry