"Emily Dickinson famously brought her poetic attention to two slanted things: light ('a certain slant of') and truth ('tell all the...but tell it...'), it is part of Yau's far-reaching genius to remind us that both light and truth depend on perception, as he turns a racist slur (slanted eyes) into the sign by which we recognize the trustworthy phenomenologist. In this latest collection, Tell It Slant, Yau–following his inclination–holds the mirror up to vision itself: watchful of his own watching, noting what poetry sees, involved in close observations which are endlessly productive of lively and original insights, creatively sampling the doxa, and always returning to ekphrasis, 'scout[ing] the path the painter has left for us to follow, ' the poet has given us his most tender, open, resonant, and beautiful book yet. My slant? I think we are astonishingly lucky to add Yau to the list of our great American poets at this moment, when we most need his work to help us recognize that gradual and constant dazzle which is the transformational capability of attention."–Laura Mullen
