Rules of the House

Tsering Wangmo Dhompa, Wangmo Dhompa. Apogee Press, $12.95 (96pp) ISBN 978-0-9669937-9-0

Apparently the first book of poems in English by (or about) a Tibetan-American, Tsering Wangmo Dhompa's Rules of the House is set in Tibet and in the South Asian exile communities where Dhompa spent her youth. Her interconnected, memory-drenched poems (many in short prose paragraphs) move easily between particular Tibetan losses and a gnomic lyric mode that welcomes all comers: monastery kitchens sit beside funerals and love affairs, epigrams promise ""wording eyes,"" and one page concludes ""Give eyes to your feet. Don't follow.""

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