Lawrence Barrett Review of I Am South by Donna Snyder, Virgoray Press, 2010; Available at www. virgoraypress.blogspot.com.

Donna Snyder, an accomplished, well-known and published El Paso poet and writer has delivered her first book, or rather chapbook, with a style that can be characterized as uniquely her own. Not one to obfuscate meanings, Snyder writes with searing clarity and in-your-face commentary that is refreshing because, thank God, one does not have to sit and agelessly ponder a puzzle-work of abstractions.

I can’t write subtleties by nature
I articulate experience in blatant terms
I name the emotion

Snyder also employs hugely scenic, dramatic and emotive imagery which sort of shimmers and moves her work along, at times, embryonic and dreamlike. Snyder begins her work with an ekphrastic piece, “A Pastel Study in Shadow.” Snyder writes in “Part Three” of her “Pastel Study”:

She sits alone with her guest
In the non-light of dusk
Her feet firm on the floor

Calls it by name without distress
Hands warm on sloped thighs

When the light fades
The shade will eat
The lilac dust

(Read the full review at Slim Gizzards Poetry Review)