"Written at a time when much poetry seems to rise from false emotion, D. A. Powell's poems - of love, lust, and the physical and psychological reality of sickness - are sincere. Yet authenticity is not their only virtue . . . these poems derive their power from a keen sensitivity to the potential of language to pun, sing, and give us experience, sometimes simultaneously. Powell never lets us forget that we are having a linguistic experience as well as a visceral one . . . Powell's work shows canonical influence - Williams, cummings, H.D., and Eliot most notably - and yet maintains its own predominant voice, that of a truth teller who metes out accuracy with a fierce but well-spoken intelligence."–BOMB Magazine
"The poems of Lunch [have] the dazzle of double-exposed film, but this style has substance, mimicking as it does the fickleness of memory itself. Powell's formalism is not only distended and sonic, but also the product of a subtly tailored typography and syntax . . . [a] polished yet troubling volume."–Boston Review
"Written at a time when much poetry seems to rise from false emotion, D. A. Powell's poems - of love, lust, and the physical and psychological reality of sickness - are sincere. Yet authenticity is not their only virtue . . . these poems derive their power from a keen sensitivity to the potential of language to pun, sing, and give us experience, sometimes simultaneously. Powell never lets us forget that we are having a linguistic experience as well as a visceral one . . . Powell's work shows canonical influence - Williams, cummings, H.D., and Eliot most notably - and yet maintains its own predominant voice, that of a truth teller who metes out accuracy with a fierce but well-spoken intelligence."–BOMB Magazine
"His poems take place in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic, and their strange juxtapositions, at first glance devoid of overt emotionalism, sometimes bring you running around a blind corner straight into a fist."–San Jose Mercury News, "Bay Area's Best Poetry Books of 2000"
