“Loveliest Grotesque is a darkly fascinating book. It’s a sweet, shape-shifting creature and a fun postmodern romp. Page after page fill with energetic surprises, keeping the reader intrigued–formal quatrains juxtaposed against prose vignettes…short-line riffs against skinny sonnets against a ballad that spreads across the page. Smartness and punnyness abound, casting vibrant spins on overused Asian-American tropes. Finally, the slippery slope of too much fun might stop for a nano moment to contemplate an important existential question: “Why were there manatees at all?” Obviously, the answer is this: after 9/11, in the new millennium, all formal discourses must explode, splinter and fragment and coalesce again into a new voice that rocks!” —Marilyn Chin, judge, 2006 First Book Award
