Like Whitman's "Song of Myself," Hughes' Sugar Factory is a laud for the land, a deep song of praise for the ecstasy in the ordinary. Riding the train, peeling fruit, contemplating streaks of color--here we find everyday encounters opening doorways to memory, both intimate and ancestral. The result is a quietly fierce collection of poems that spans coasts and continents as it boldly "carries the voices of the living/and the dead."

Patricia Killelea