The poetry of "Simple Gestures" shifts the landscape beneath the reader's feet. The planet is the poet's terrain. Kuntz introduces the redolent smell of a Saigon market, then guides us to a Japanese hot bath. The lined hands of an old woman in Brooklyn give way to a class mouthing familiar vowels in a Philippine refugee camp. From the exotic to the everyday, survival- physical and emotional- is the filament that binds disparate worlds to each other. Personal and cultural ties are slashed and refastened, giving readers poetry of the heart and spirit.