The title of this debut poetry collection is an evocative pun on author Andy Quan’s varied perspectives – that of an Asian-Canadian whose eyes are “slanted”; of a gay man whose sensual interest is “bent” or slanted away from the norm; and most importantly, of the slant view that the combination of these identities affords its author.

Other poets have made vivid use of minority experience as a way to analyze the world and their own place in it – Li-Young Lee comes to mind, as do Mark Doty and Dionne Brand. But all too frequently minority writers rely too heavily on the fact of their marginality rather than how that marginality sheds light on the world. Identity politics without the politics is really only narcissism disguised as soul-searching.

The problem with Slant is that, apart from a few complaints about customs officials and other brutes, little of substance is said about either the gay experience or the experience of being Asian in North America. Contrary to what Quan may believe, men dancing together are not inherently interesting, and his lyricism rarely transforms this by-now-familiar subject matter into the truly evocative. Quan has a responsibility to make his images and scenes more than reportage, but his poems rarely fulfill this mandate.

One exception is in the travel/love poems that appear in the final two sections. Here, Quan finds a lyric impulse that transcends the journal-entry style that hinders some of the other poems. The combination of subjects – lost love, unfamiliar landscapes, the feeling of foreignness – brings out the best in Quan, as in “Last Europe,” which closes with “All these cities burnt into my eyes/like a chance eclipse, I feel your hand/touch my face, the whorl of your/fingerprints, my breath becoming short.”