In Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey takes you on a fascinating journey to . . . a place of desperate actuality . . . joining other visionary poets of dépaysement- Henri Michaux in Asia, John Ash in Anatolia, Sharon Doubiago in Peru, Lorca in Manhattan. Mackey really seems to recover a lost part of herself in the edgy lyricism of the tropics, haunted by fado, forro, and death. Please read Cold Snap; who but Mackey could have written it? SUGAR ZONE authoritatively creates a language and a culture; but the lines are tense with the vulnerability of lovers, strangers, and travelers with no ticket home. — Dennis Nurske