English as a Second Language and Other Poems

Warm tenderness and fiery critique sit side-by-side in Bolina’s English as A Second Language, a collection that skewers, laments, and celebrates America with intelligence, humility, and a disarming sense of humor.In Jaswinder Bolina’s English as A Second Language and Other Poems, we are asked to imagine the tender and harsh realities of this world within a single breath— a Steiff monkey resting next to a child in a crib and the tired hands of “a thousand /women in Sidi Bouzid” assembling the stuffed animal. Coated in an armor of wit and humor and steeped in the idiosyncrasies of language, English as a Second Language pits sentimentality against cynicism and the personal against the national. What remains is the kaleidoscopic image of the modern American