The Cave Canem Poetry Prize, awarded annually to an African American poet for her first full-length collection, counts among its recipients current U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey as well as 2012 Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith. Like her forerunners, Dutton's award-winning work is a lyrical debut of impressive breadth, one in which multiple, often conflicting emotions find polyphonic expression: from West African clans and Korean pictograms to American jazzmen and bands on the road. She is master of the snapshot, of drunks and crooners, groupies and guitarists, from late nights at casinos of hard luck and good hands to motel rooms filled with morning light that burns like hot bourbon. Dutton's aural aftereffect is often less like a full blast of Armstrong and more like Etta James in her exquisite prime. And although Dutton structures movements with mathematical care, refers to time signatures, variables, and vectors in canorous measures, much of the book moves like a radio between stations, picking up scratchy vocals, fragments of narrative, prayers on forgotten wavelengths, all so much loaded static.--Baez, Diego Copyright 2010 Booklist