I honour and admire these poems for their groundwork understanding. Here, oppression is shown forth as a condition of language, a violence of syntax. And here, in resistance to oppression, extraordinariness lifts a beautiful, if harried, affirming sound. With signal integrity, the poet exploits no popular catastrophe but chooses, instead, to enter the mythic heart of catastrophe, there to make new myths. -- Donald Revell, citing Graft for the Poetry Society of America's 2001 George Bogin Memorial Award.