Cardboard Piano

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons," Dostoevsky said, and RINA TERRY'S Cardboard Piano derives from the consciousness of one who entered prisons and witnessed and made music from it. Terry finds reasons to grovel and to gleam. Things take flight only to have bruising, bone-snapping falls in defiance of the romantic trajectory. The circumstances of deprivation contend with moments of soul making. How can there be radiance here? How can there be "an odd way out"? The poems are clear-eyed documents, a shank in the heart of civilization, and an offering. -- Bruce Smith, Professor of English at Syracuse University, author of Devotions, Songs for Two Voices