From Kirkus Reviews
An Iranian-born Californian who writes for Publishers Weekly, Zandvakili debuts with a volume that stands out for its singular style: a hodgepodge of broken English phrases, child rhymes, and dizzying punctuation. Zandvakilis truncated diction and cryptic asides disguise her brightly colored, girlish musings on romance. The rough and disorienting larger narrative mostly charts the bumps and bliss of modern love: The Lying Mango, beginning with its virginal lover, records her dreamy walks on the beach, complete with a household pet, and hopes for a marriage proposal. Similarly, Body Light Houses, despite its difficulties, is mainly about the pangs of young relations: she longs for a ring in a window; she waits for his call after a date; she implores herself to forget her troubles with poetry. With its unclear arc, the oddly shaped verse and the dense bits of prose, this disjointed volume captures the mystery of teenagerhood for one with a foreignness of tongue. The textures become so tangled in Ponce de Leon that the poet begins in media res, and that hardly mattersdream sequences further confuse the hes and shes. Zandvakilis odd juxtapositions lead to a series of poems on These Fish Beauties, which include evocative images from her childhood but end with silly talk of paring down lovers lives to a walk on the beach, and speak of a boy and girl tired of playing/games. The jarring surfaces here yield no greater depth of thought or emotion. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
There is a line that poets, and all humans, walk. Between randomness and meaning. Between the rush of details that make up everyday life and the abstractions (success, love, faith) that give it purpose. Between the five senses and the sixth. For a delicate stroll along that tightrope, see the first book by a lovely poet named Katayoon Zandvakili, born in Iran, now living in Piedmont. -- Minal Hajratwala, San Jose Mercury News Review, April 11, 1999
