"Keith Holyoak’s reputation as a meticulous translator of classical Chinese poetry is already established.  Now his powerful new book My Minotaur presents us with a wide-ranging selection of his own poems in a spectrum of varied forms.  Holyoak is a versatile poet who can turn his hand as easily to extended narrative as to sonnets or concise lyrics, and his subject matter is similarly diverse: the self, nature, history, portraiture, politics, family and social relationships, philosophic questioning, aesthetics.  Holyoak deals with everything, in a way that is not common today.  The gem of this book is his terza rima “Descent,” a dream-vision that invokes Dante’s Inferno, although in a modern milieu of terror, violence, and harrowing uncertainty."

—Joseph S. Salemi