A Moth Collection by Anna Ojascastro Guzon

It’s a pleasure to quote, and to praise, “A Moth Collection.” Few first books of poetry are as easy to like. The variety is striking; Guzon offers us succinct prose poems, a pair of sestinas, skinny poems, an ode to forbidden fantasies, and a poem composed entirely of accusatory questions. The attractive and refreshingly modest speaker trusts God, is susceptible to the “draw of pyrrhic applause,” and has the wit to title a poem “She Changed Her Name to Judy.” I love the first stanza of “How to Live Large: A Debate”: “She said she’d take Ella’s voice / The pixie frame of that Broadway dancer / Maybe the anatomy of Heidi Klum / And Frank O’Hara’s charisma / She’d be a poet. And live in New York City / She’d be a flirt. She’d be young.” Guzon defines herself beautifully when she addresses the good gray poet by name: “I’m no genius, Mr. Whitman. I’m just often alone until you and everyone’s aloneness wraps an arm around my waist and I don’t mind.”

–David Lehman, Editor, The Oxford Book of American Poetry Series Editor, The Best American Poetry, Editor-in-Chief, BAP blog