A Pretty Little Wilderness

In this time of family separation and prisons for profit, Cassandra Dallett has transformed her personal trauma into a brilliant artistic argument for decarceration. Of California's prisoner-firefighters, she writes, "when the fall is dry, hot,/ windy, and desperate/they throw poor and brown bodies/ at the flames/ like they always have." A love letter for an imprisoned partner, a scathing indictment of racism, and a source of infinite beauty, A Pretty Little Wilderness is another devastating, gorgeous triumph by one of the hottest poets in the San Francisco Bay Area. If Oakland were to create a Poet Laureate's position, I'd nominate Cassandra, who puts her art where her great heart is.

• Jan Steckel, author of The Horizontal Poet