"Patriarchal sentiment is not the reason Reginald Betts begins Bastards of the Reagan Era with a heart-wrenching praise song to his sons, Miles and Micah. He is celebrating the singular occasion of their continued breath. In this bitter, unflinching and triumphant work, Betts mercilessly probes the soul of the soulless machine charged with the disappearing and dismantling of black men's lives. This crisp assemblage of perseverance and loss relentlessly pummels the status quo, poems building each upon the other until the desolate inevitability of the narrative both enervates and empowers the reader. The poet himself warns, 'when I sing this awful tale, there is more than a dead black man in the center.'"-Patricia Snith,.