<DIV>An architecture equally poetry, fairy-tale, autobiography, and fiction, <i>The Room Where I Was Born </i>rebuilds the house of the lyric from fragments salvaged from experience and literature. Though the poems are borne out of the intersection of violence and sexuality, they also affirm the tenderness and compassion necessary to give consciousness and identity sufficient meaning. Its language the threshold over which the brutal crosses into the beautiful, this collection is an achievement of courage and vision.</DIV>