All-American Girl by Robin Becker

Lloyd Schwartz recommends
All-American Girl, poems by Robin Becker: "Unsparing and self-knowing, Robin Becker uses irony (as in her double- and triple-edged title) as if it were a form of directness. Painful, often devastating poems contend with crushing loss, the convolutions of sexuality and family politics, the struggle to accept the self. Yet they also rage with such imaginative energy, you can't wait to read them again and again, feeling an astonished pleasure in both their accomplishment and their humanity." Reviewed in "Bookshelf" on page 238. (Univ. of Pittsburgh)