"Crystal Williams's poems are a serious playground, their argot full of mischief and empathy. She writes idioms created from fissures and travesties, the makeshift discourse of survival, a rhetoric evolving under duress. Her poems rage against assumptions that restrict human possibilities and sing the necessities of imaginative space. They admit alienation even as they insist on generosity. Troubled Tongues is a gritty amalgam of passion and compassion, surprising in its moves, alive with home truths, hard won wisdoms."---Alice Fulton<BR><BR>"I love this book---this wonderful adventurous language, this woman turning her wise and tender glance on what it means to be human in ever more difficult times."---Dorothy Allison