SOURCE: Perloff, Marjorie. Review of Forbidden Entries, by John Yau. Boston Review 22, no. 3 (summer 1997): 39-41.

In the following review, Perloff surveys the broad stylistic and emotional range of verse in Forbidden Entries.

John Yau has always cultivated the image of Angry Young Man. The picture of him on the back cover of one of his early books, Sometimes (Sheep Meadow Press, 1979) presents the poet, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, slouching on a bench in old army fatigues, his long black unkempt hair, moustache, cigarette dangling from his unsmiling mouth, and matchbook open ready for the strike giving him the appearance of streetwise tough guy, perhaps on his lunchbreak from a construction job. The pose, one guesses, is designed to distance Yau from his middle-class background: the poet grew up in and around Boston and received his B.A. degree from one of the most expensive liberal arts colleges...