Book excerpt: Poetry. Bobbie Louise Hawkins' BIJOUX explores both the hope and futility of everyday life with wit and erudition. "Most interesting works of word-art arise out of a sense of our being 'at a loss for words' - while knowing that there must be some, out there, among all the deafening racket of the outside: words we may use to counter and cut through pandemonium, to clear a space, to have this moment, in these words. Again and again, with elegant insight, wit, and compassion, Bobbie Louise Hawkins' poems invite us into such spaces of human clarity." - Anselm Hollo