An Enemy in Their Mouths

Dorie LaRue's title alludes to a line from Othello: "O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains." In this searingly honest collection, the enemy is drugs, and the brains being stolen are those of our children. Much has been written about the drug epidemic, but only LaRue understands the all-consuming hunger that drives it: "the idea that being drugged/is better than being alive." The ghost of Anne Sexton, who was also driven by such hungers, presides over these poems, as rich with imagery as hers.

-Julie Kane, Professor Emeritus, Northwestern State University, and Poet Laureate 2011-2013