"When city and self merge, poet John Chávez begins his magic: to build the child under our eyes. The child is both cityscape and self under scrutiny, 'clearly disciplined & put to repair.' The child is parent and body, both the painted canvas and the revealed photograph. Watch this miracle of consciousness unfold in City of Slow Dissolve. Rejoice in our chance to reappraise and reinvent, even recover, our human identity, even our souls, through Chávez's...

Spare and incisive, the poems in Losing the Ring in the River deal with three strong women-Clara, Emma, and Liz, women who are tough, often sassy, and have dreams that aren't quelled by the realities they face.