The Moments, the Minutes, the Hours

With a couple of platinum-selling "neo-soul" records to her name, Scott doesn't have much to prove, but offers this cull from a parallel life—the poetry she's written on and off, with varying degrees of public exposure, since middle school—in the hopes that poets everywhere will "continue to insight, ignite, and recite this blessed, raunchy, wild ride of a craft." The book reads like an ecstatic but disciplined panoply of influence and inspiration. Love poems, break-up poems, short-of-money poems, weariness poems, Christian poems, celebratory poems: all have an immediacy and short-lined honesty that reflects a deep appreciation of everyone from Nikki Giovanni to Emily Dickinson (just two of the poets mentioned in Scott's introduction). Better than the average coffeehouse fare, the poems probably would not have seen print without the records. That won't bother fans, and it shouldn't bother readers who come upon them not knowing who Scott is, and enjoy the poems anyway. (June)