Poet Alicia Ostriker writes “Empire of Dreams is a masterpiece,” noting that the writing is “concerned with writing and language itself, its relation to memory and desire, its boundaries and genres and the possibilities of transgressing and crossing dressing them. Poetry here dresses itself in the garb of dramatic monologue, love letter, TV commercial, diary excerpt, movie criticism, celebrity confession, literary theory, bastinado, manifesto, etc. ‘Reality’ and ‘fantasy’ interpenetrate. The ‘I’ is an elusive entity, a ‘void that abhors the void’. Despair is handled with acute comedy. Eroticism is icily analyzed without losing its heat. ‘Poetry is this screaming madwoman’. And these cerebral and passionate games proceed with a relentless intensity one sees in no other writer.”

Academy of American Poets
POETS.ORG on Empire of Dreams