Each of these marvelous poems engages as instantly as a photograph: you read two or three words and you re on the scene, recoiling in horror as Trotsky is murdered or twisting uncomfortably as your daughter buys her first bra. There s no need to develop Stephen Gibson s pictures; they enter your mind so fast that you can t help feeling that what s happening on the page has already happened and that, very likely, you were there when it did. He s a poet for other poets to learn from, for no one else writing today uses language as economically or to more immediate effect.
David Kirby
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