With their cultural roots in Albania, the poems in Love is a very long word are distinct in welcome ways from almost anything else in Canadian literature. Laconic and edged with sharp wit, they engage the necessary courage and strength of character to transform the often bleak, thwarted and alienated experiences which they recount into art of the finest, most valid sort: uncompromising, imaginative, and deeply true to life.

These poems are immediately accessible and still full of mystery. There’s passion from a woman’s point of view, escape stories, poems about family and so on. The subject matter is far less important than the way Bashllari wraps you around her fingers and has her way with you. The reader is happy inside these poems because Bashllari knows the secret languages of intimacy.