Poetry. "What an older poet looks for in a first book by a younger poet is intensity of language—'the startle effect,' a term applied to the grasping motion infants instinctually make. It reminds us of our descent from trees, our human nature, our reliance on speech. Reading Mia Leonin's poems makes me newly aware of how we use imagery to save ourselves from falling. Leonin is observant and imaginative. In one instance she is inside the mind of a blind person; in another, an aged woman. The nuances of her environment are not lost on her. Potions and magic spells exert a powerful hold on her work as she struggles to come to terms with her part-Hispanic, part Midwestern background. Some of these poems are oracular, hard to riddle. A few are abstract and defy definition. But on balance this is a lively and engaging first book."—Maxine Kumin

Mia Angela Leonin is the author of BRAID (Anhinga Press, 1999) and UNRAVELING THE BED (Anhinga Press, Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series, 2008). Her poems have appeared in New Letters, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner and River Styx, among others. Leonin is of Cuban-American descent and was raised in Missouri. She lives in Miami, Florida, where she teaches at the University of Miami and frequently writes about performance, dance and theater.

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