The word "angry" doesn't come up a whole lot in discussions of poetry. Which is not to say that poetry can't be angry—like a lot of rock stars, Sylvia Plath is remembered more for the tragic end of her story than for the fire that fueled her career—but that people prefer to acknowledge poetry when it's funny, or brilliant. Local author Shin Yu Pai's new collection, Aux Arcs (La Alameda Press, $18), is both funny and brilliant, but the quality that kept coming back to me as I read the book and then read it again was its anger.
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