The Long Surprise

Contest Judge X. J. Kennedy heralds Barbara Lau’s The Long Surprise as
full of unexpectedness…feeling and verve
and
a confident step onto the main stage of American poetry.
Adds Eleanor Wilner,
Here is a poet of candor, vigor and daylight vision, who loves without illusion…whose ear is unerring, and whose startlingly fresh images push up like ‘wild mint…through sidewalks. ’ Posing questions about the making of art ( Is chaos / counterpoint to art, or instead, / its tuning fork? ), marriage ( How little is enough? ), faith, family, and selfhood ( Where does she begin / and I end? ), Lau explores
how life announces itself
at our uneasy turn of the century. Her poems witness both the horrific - the loss of a child, the greed of the impoverished, the motives behind child prostitution - and common pleasures
so dense they sedate you.