RaveThe Salemite[Sally Wen Mao] crafts an immense undertaking with Oculus, weaving together contemplations of contemporary media, race, technology, loneliness, womanhood and other achingly modern and timely elements, all achieving perfect cohesion within the book ... Certain themes and motifs run through Oculus like a poetic river ... What I love most about Mao’s verse is its sense of contemplative isolation and detachment ... there is a current running beneath every poem in this collection that begs something of the reader: our reverie, perhaps, or even our very hearts.
