Review of Violet Energy Ingots at Full Stop

"In considering what composes Nguyen’s poetic disturbances, I find myself returning to the collection’s title and read these poems as a series of ingots. An ingot is a mass of metal cast into a shape easy for storage and further processing. An ingot is a kind of placeholder state of existence where precious material waits as a cash reserve, or to be made into something else. Nguyen’s poetics are not unlike gold bricks: dense, full of mundane matter (think irises, red candies, hands), gesturing towards the otherworldly (language itself, goddesses, hauntings, history) in a precarious balance, formed by a process of delicate alchemy."

From a review of Violet Energy Ingots by Miriam W. Karraker