Poetry. Donald Platt’s aptly titled and arresting fourth collection of poems, DIRT ANGELS, examines how we exist in states of physical disrepair, decay, and disability: the world’s transience exhibited in the slow degradation of our very consciousness and flesh. And yet this awareness should not incapacitate us, Platt suggests; rather, it should further disarm us to the fleeting charms that make up a life: the corruptible beauty in the bodies of our children and loved ones, the ways language itself haphazardly'cross-pollinate[s], misspoken and misheard’ and yet still blossoms. DIRT ANGELS offers its readers resolute, if embattled, joyfulness through Platt’s gorgeous language: itself a sinuous vocabulary of praise even in the face of mishap and pain —Paisley Rekdal.