PositiveThe RumpusThere’s both anger and tenderness in these poems. They don’t turn away from the scraping and fighting that people need to do—like the gathering candy from the road—just to survive ... The brother is a millstone for the speaker and her family, but he’s also a lithe, dynamic, protean presence, a powerful vehicle for Diaz’s excellent powers of description. She transmutes his bony shoulder blades into \'a failed wing\' and \'a silver shovel\' ... One of Diaz’s strengths is her ability to use received forms (like the abecedarian, the pantoum, the triolet, and the ghazal) without making them into exercises ... the bigness of her poems serves her well: Diaz’s debut is a formidable, impressive collection.
