“In The Mynah Bird’s Own Words is a remarkable volume. An assemblage of lined poems and prose poems, it is a compact and concentrated, lyrically delicious collection that comes very close to having the sweep of a novel. The long, central sequence, Rosary, is astonishing. It builds a powerful narrative arc, and yet its each part, each impeccable verse paragraph is discrete and beautiful. Things in these poems take on symbolic values that loom ever larger as we see how each connects and returns us to the larger story. And yet, even the poems outside the centerpiece sequence are part of that same whole, so that by the time we reach the concluding poem, Art,in which a woman practices the craft of what one might call seductive invisibility, we are made to see that poem, and that woman’s craft, as very like this poet’s art. This collection is part sleight of hand, but all highly crafted. It is, in a word, magic.” —Robert Wrigley, Judge, First Annual Tupelo Press Chapbook Competition