In The Sparrow's Plight: Woes of a 21st Century Black Poet, Terry A. O'Neal divulges a woman's scrapes against reality with intensity and specific details particular to a focused bird's eye view. This writing is not bogged down in abstract intellect. O'Neal examines a shared feminine existence -- sans dogma -- as she represents the weak and delicate, lost and downtrodden, even the absurd. She exposes through their weaknesses an inner strength as they rallied to carry on. She investigates weighty themes in taut, concise poems trimmed of artifice with poems that simply and gracefully state the concern of the poet/narrator. O'Neal provided the sparrow to create an image, to bring a voice to the surface and draw the weariness out in a light song; a song that sings through doubt and strain. It is a fine example of how a poet should be able to thread language with threadbare power. Like a sparrow, small but highly visible, especially in the desolation of winter...when all birds have flown the cold, reaped land, the sparrow remains. This is an easy, almost spiritual text that leaves the reader with ah, ah-ha or, just wanting more. Thomas Park MA English Detroit, September 29, 2013