Solmaz Sharif

Excellent title poem and devastating/devastatingly good methodology she invented for the book—using the Department of Defense dictionary and terms found within it to build poems in different ways. She uses the terms as titles, as section headers, as the beginning and endings of lines. The language the DOD corrupted to turn into ghastly euphemisms is put back into its human context. Sharif writes as an Iranian American whose family was torn apart but the Iranian wars and whose growing up was misshapen by the War on Terror and xenophobia.

A couple poems almost live up to the promise of the title poem but... too many are kind of dull. Poems written in the form of censored letters to Guantanamo and the last poem Drone are other highlights.… (meer)