Tired of all the young voices in American poetry being at least thirtysomething? Read Kwang. He's 28 but sounds younger because, with still-green egotism, he writes about himself as child, adolescent, and young slacker. Born in Seoul, he moved with his brothers from his Korean mother to his father in the U.S. when he was four. He is the sole English-only speaker in the family, much too American to be other than bemused when at 20 he and a brother visit his mother--bemused, that is, until, recognizing "the trombone in her voice," he realizes, "I love her." The spontaneous emotion and addled charm of the poem about that re-encounter are in the others, too, whether the external subject be his first baseball glove, harvesting wild rice, his grandfather Louis, or (quite often) love, which for him still means eros more than anything else. His speechlike, swinging free verse rather resembles Charles Bukowski's stuff, but whereas Buk has always been older than 40, Kwang sounds like he'll never be 40. --Ray Olson