Paul Celan’s harrowing Holocaust incantation, “Death Fugue,” is the apparent inspiration for this poem by Marilyn Chin, a withering takedown of our so-called global diplomacy. The immigrant’s dream of a better life, “free and lush,” deteriorates as she is swept up into a vicious cycle of ethnic and gender bias. Storybook rhymes turn sinister, and ancient totems are buried under the unrelenting cadence of a New World tarantella — xenophobia and nationalism exacting their murderous toll while “the bamboo grows and grows.” Selected by Rita Dove

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