Multilingualism begets a mental dexterity and a comfort with ambiguity that is difficult to acquire through other means. In learning a new language, we discover how words shape our thoughts and how flexible our conception of the world can be when transferred to a new grammar.

Susan Holbrook is funny, sometimes enough to make one laugh out loud. In Joy Is So Exhausting, her second collection, she employs a variety of poetic constraints to create poems that surprise and delight without being too cute or comfortable. Constraint-based poems often read as though they must have been much more fun for the [...]