Why They Grow Wings

Poetry. Winner of the 1999 Gerald Cable Book Award. "What sensual enchantments and imaginative adventures await the reader of Nin Andrews' latest volume. Her poems are witty, vivacious, surprising. Houdini will show up and paraphrase Heraclitus. Or the sign at the Pasta Palace ('Cook Needed') will turn into an erotic daydream ('Cock Needed') with the logic of an entry in a book of lies. Andrews liberates debased forms (the chain letter, the earnest Yuletide family report) and assimilates unusual influences (Borges, Henri Michaux) in her highly distinctive prose poems. She has an energining effect: reading her makes you want to write. I'm crazy about this poet"—David Lehman.