(Guest post by Devi S. Laskar)

One of my favorite Natalie Diaz poems is her pantoum “My Brother at 3 a.m.,” in her first book, When My Brother Was An Aztec.

I am first a poet and I had the pleasure of being Natalie’s student for one day several years ago, in a workshop in Santa Cruz. She is a terrific teacher and she talked about perspective and writing practice and continuity. Pantoum is a favorite poetry form of mine, I love the way the lines are braided through the stanzas and how you as a writer have a chance to perform a bit of magic and change meaning or perspective. In Natalie’s poetry, I admire how she tackles difficult subjects. In the case of this pantoum, it’s drug addiction. The language is vivid and precise and she gets the pantoum to bend a little at the end so that we readers end up with two POVs and it’s pure poetic magic.