In his first chapbook collection, Normal conveys a sense of humanity that is rare in a world where "quality" poetry is a few stanzas of filler between a cartoon and an advertisement in The New Yorker - rarer still when one considers how terse his poems are.: "everyone's a virgin,/unless you're/born fucked." This is a complete poem, something one might expect to find on a bumper-sticker and, yet, what a gem it is.

Normal sees the dark humor in our collective fears. In "a deadman's underwear," the undergarment of a dead AIDS patient becomes a metaphor for both intolerance and our fear of death.

These poems made me laugh at times and they made me think and Normal's simple, compact language has a grace to it I only rarely get to read. Simply put, this is a brilliant first collection. I eagerly await Normal's next.

- JCE