Thousand Cricket Song: Second Edition (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781632100252)

The keen eye of compassion in each detail, the steady touch of its cadence in each unfolding line.

Here is a perfect, clean and delicate (powerful and often terrifying) work of art. In its simplicity lies profound emotion, both beautiful and laden with sadness. These masterful slim poems speak with discipline and exquisite fervor. Catherine Strisik is a new voice already in full bloom. This is a very moving portrait of a land, its people, and the universal human spirit.

Catherine Strisik's poetry engages me on every level. The poems, clear and articulate, exhibit an ability to instinctively peer through the many layers of Cambodian culture to its essence. As a Cambodian myself, I am moved by Strisik's empathy and understanding, and feel that I am with her as she observes Cambodia and Cambodians. At the same time I have a sense that I am looking back at her journey through the window of reality, recognizing her as compatriot and companion in our journey together. Her intimacy in many of the poems is genuine and earned, balanced by wide, sweeping poems that give a sense of the vast continuum that is Cambodia.

Cathy Strisik's Thousand-Cricket Song is a work of insight, deep feeling, and vibrancy, rendering Cambodia's "mottled beauty" with compassion, outrage, lush sensory detail-the whirring of the cicadas in the Mekong night, the grace of the apsara and her timeless dance, "the torsos hooked / to braided ropes".