"What our lives permit us to perceive as givens, Nguyen reveals as mere conditions, inextricably tied to and guided by greater forces--from the economy to the environment, from the Mayan predictions to the menstrual cycle, from the weight of history to the burden of the future." --Michael Brodeur, The Boston Globe

The poems in Violet Energy Ingots contain a sense of dis-ease, rupture, things frayed, and grief--as love shimmers the edges. Ryo Yamaguchi describes Nguyen's writing as "a kind of stuttering with intelligences, impressions, and emotions flaring up as the...