Christopher Soto

This is a really incredible anthology that manages to collect decades' worth of work by queer poets of color and give you an amazing taste of the variety and possibility. I want to go out and read so much more work by all these poets; it has works by the sort of "obvious" poets, but also newer, then-up-and-coming poets, and poets whose work is perhaps less immediately thought of. Favorite poems in this include Denice Frohman's "once a marine biologist/told me octopuses have three hearts", show more "Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong" by Ocean Vuong, "Heavy" by Hieu Minh Nguyen, and "Wet Dream" by Allyson Ang. Honestly though, I loved pretty much all of these poems, and their variety is really a strength of this collection. show less

There are some really beautiful poems in this book but honestly it could have been spread out into multiple volumes. 100 poets is too much to retain and I feel like some organization of topics or eras could have helped raise up the writers instead of piling them into one book. That being said, it’s still a worthy compendium.