Date of Birth

The poems in this bracing debut do not shy away from incomprehensible tragedies: racism, poverty, abuse, and addiction, incest, and infidelities of the body and mind. Yet the world depicted by Shawn R. Jones has moments of humor and playfulness-for example, in a litany of indelible nicknames of the members of her childhood cohort in Atlantic City. If Date of Birth is heart-wrenching in its journalistic reporting of suffering, it is also a testament to the strength and resilience of the figures it portrays.