VIETNAM MADE ME WHO I AM by Karol Nielsen

Karol Nielsen‘s new book sees the poet masterfully engaging with the question of how to define and communicate one’s place in a complex world, speaking volumes about the society she inhabits. Nielsen, who is also an acclaimed author of two memoirs, paints vivid scenes that are as easy to visualize as they are suggestive and multilayered, at once real and metaphorical. Full of soul-searching, heartbreak, and the triumph of insight, this moving collection guides its readers through a personal journey full of historical resonance yet fully present in the here-and-now.—

–Anton Yakovlev, author of the chapbook Chronos Dines Alone, winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize 2018

Karol Nielsen’s collection carries the indelible grief of war and its many faces “like a prison tattoo.” Her urban poems are populated by her father, neighbors, lovers, famous actors, and people she encounters on the New York City streets. Striking and unforgettable, the war stories seep into her poems. The distant wars of Vietnam and Afghanistan permeate the wars of everyday life. From this hopelessness, tender love poems rise like “small bursts of color/then full, fat blooms.”

–Claudia Serea, author of Twoxism