"The author of 14 books of poems, including the selected Mad Dogs of Trieste (2000), Vega is the director of Incisions/Arts, a program that brings writers into prisons to lead poetry workshops. Some of the poems in this volume were written at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York: they have the immediacy and directness of lineated prose, as in a poem on so-called 'Driving While Black' legislation: 'Police/ largely/ oppose the bill/ insisting it would/ create an undue burden/ on law enforcement officers/ and wouldn't necessarily prove a thing.' Other poems meditate on relationships, writerly and otherwise, or take stock of a difficult writing life (one ends: 'I ain't dead yet'). This book doesn't contain Vega's strongest work, but it serves as kind of poetic diary of justice and of witness as sought through language. In a poem from the title section, which ends the book, the speaker sums up the scale at which it happens: 'I'm reading your poems/ and a huge ramshackle building appears, the light from a hundred candles/ spills out on the snow.' " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)