Fabrizio, A: Determinant

-These nineteen supple poems have both a strong sense of unity and a wide spectrum of forms, themes, and moods. Virtuosic writing combines with jagged feeling, and the end result is engaging, dramatic, and unpredictable.---Henri Cole



-These poems have a strong voice and a bold reach: they turn outwards, finding big subjects and solid narratives. They seek to make a world: and then they persuade the reader to live in it.---Eavan Boland

-Determinant is a strong, assured collection that begins with our planet Earth and ends with an egg. This poetic echoing of subjects and objects is indicative of Alex Fabrizio's range: these poems guide us to a vantage point from which wonder contracts and expands without a diminishing of its essence. Her speakers are calmly certain of uncertainty. Let this collection trouble what one might assume about the explanatory connotation of the title--the poems have little concern for the didacticism of cause and embrace the effects of the world on the ambiguous lyric self. They encourage a reintegration of the 'I' with that world, a 'turning returning' to it. They give the reader that gift.---Lo Kwa Mei-en