Review Through a poetic lens impacted by childhood isolation that led to a deep understanding of the pathos surrounding humanity, Jacquelyn Shah knits Small Fry. Sometimes terse, often humorous, and always compassionate, she has fashioned a brilliant and incisive collection of poems reflecting the world in which we live. Sehba Sarwar, author of Black Wings, a novel of transgression and redemptionInJacquelyn Shah's book, Small Fry, the reader is treated to poems that range widely in subject, yet circle essential matters of growing up, understanding power and powerlessness, and family in all its permutations. There are poems for a lost brother, a speaker's poem children compared to a sister's crocheted dolls, a father's puzzles and an uncle's complicated attention. Shah's style mixes Oulipian methods in "Crazy Eights, A Little Lost" with the two shaped columns found in the poem "Snowman's Eyes" and the wing-like "To A Damselfly." Throughout there are touchstones of childhood found in forbidden candy, the menace of a neighborhood bully, a fascination with circus freaks and the carnival, and a "jack-out-of-the-box." This sure voice takes the reader through scenes which captivate, as the ending poem, "Go Wish Upon Yourself" insists: leave the boundaries of preconceived notions to create one's own perspective, high above the stars.Dr. Elline Lipkin, author of The Errant Thread, poems About the Author Jacquelyn "Jacsun" Shah was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, but moved to New Jersey after marriage and completed an A.B. at Rutgers University, M.A. at Drew University, both in English literature. Relocating to Texas, she earned both MFA and PhD in creative writing and English literature at the University of Houston. Founder of WAVE, Women Against Violence Everywhere (now defunct) and founding member of Voices Breaking Boundaries, an arts organization, she also edited a small journal, Encodings, for a few years. A pacifist, she stands against domination and violence of all kinds, and served on a steering committee that organized a summit on crimes against women in 1992, sponsored by the city of Houston and its police department. Formerly employed in creative writing teaching and university adjunct work, she plays now-independently, industriously, enraptured!-with words, forging poetry and non-fiction. In 2009 she purchased a small house on the Cincinnati street where she grew up, using it as a writer's retreat for six years to complete a collage-hybrid-memoir, which she hopes to publish soon. Meanwhile, she has work forthcoming in four journals and one full-length book, as well as the poems in Small Fry.