“Whether in praise songs, appraisals or meditations, the poems of Boy with Thorn embody an ardent grace. Their accomplished structures house a fearless sensitivity. Laurentiis fills history with their ‘crucial blood,’ their ‘stubbornness,’ their ‘American tongue’; and history, in return, fills him with crucial muses (from Auden to Hayden), stubborn ghosts (such as Emmett Till), and manifold expressions of culture (southern, sexual, spiritual). The result is an extraordinary, and ultimately, irreducible debut." —Terrance Hayes

“Laurentiis’ poems have the vastness of a single voice shouted into echo in a deep well, and this is why the collection seems to render more than it contains in mere information alone. Rich in subtext and musically deft, the poems please even as they parry, excite even as they incite one to consider their stakes. For this reason, the collection is owed the reading—and rereading—by poets and students of poetry both.”—Emilia Phillips, On the Seawall [on Boy with Thorn]

“. . . Their words are perfectly aimed flares; their sinuous syntax bears both fire and balm; the stories they tell are the precondition for a remapping of dream and desire. Boy with Thorn shows a mind at full speed and fearless of what it might uncover, heralding a new, true talent.”—John Keene