| 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."
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