In "Dirty Looks", Cheryl Follon serves up a fiery gumbo of playful poems drawing on the shadowy side of love. The book presents a wild Rabelaisian carnival of poetry, stories and boisterous monologues flavoured by Deep South folk and foibles, by Scottish ballads and bawdy tales, and by the jaded love chroniclers of ancient Greece and Rome. While some poems touch on more tender times, their main concern is with the thoughtlessness, jealousy, spite, deception and self-delusion that can go hand in glove with love. But for all their darkness, the poems are spiced with saucy humour and a lively, often wicked wit, and set against a sultry backdrop of Louisiana in summertime.