Alexis De Veaux’s prose poem of Billie Holiday’s life is successful both as poetry and biography. She manages to incorporate facts into her lines without losing the musical flow of her work, and her imagistic word choices tap into the emotions: “Her voice was an instrument whose notes/she played with a poet’s hand.” Within the context of her chosen format De Veaux discusses Holiday’s early childhood, her performances, her compositions, her adulthood, her addictions, and even touches on history, describing how the addictive painkillers developed during World War II for injured soldiers crossed the Atlantic and crept into our society.

Alexis De Veaux is a playwright and associate professor and chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is the author of Na-Ni; Spirits in the Street; Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde; Blue Heat: Poems and Drawings; An Enchanted Hair Tale; and The Woolu Hat.