Starred review from July 1, 2022
In her first collection in nearly three decades, MacArthur fellow Cisneros undergoes a journey of rebirth, considering her role as a woman artist and finding her place both within herself and in her ancestral Mexico.
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August 1, 2022
Cisneros (Martita, I Remember You, 2021) writes with irresistible intimacy, especially in her poetry. We feel confided in, teased, moved, and jolted as she explores matters earthy and spiritual. Cisneros is funny and lacerating, caring and mischievous. In this gathering of three decades of poems pithy and lush, brash and sexy, compassionate and outraged, she considers the places she's lived, family, lovers, neighbors, moments of wonder, injustices epic and personal, and the ways age can so rudely resculpt the body even while liberating the mind. Cisneros contrasts her journey-of-choice south from the U.S. to Mexico "with a truck hauling my library," to the plight of her grandparents in Mexico. "Who couldn't read, fled / North during the revolution," carrying few belongings. Everything glistens in street scenes, while nature is full of lessons offered by the "guru moon" and "inspirational ants." Cisneros seeks beauty and serenity, delighting in solitude and being happy "in bed with my love, a book." But she also offers stinging social critiques and frank and hilarious riffs on sex. This is a delectably saucy and incisive, righteous and resonant collection.
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August 15, 2022
The introspective latest from Cisneros (Loose Woman) sweeps through her life with blunt observations and heartfelt prayers. The frequent use of Spanish words and fresh images of quotidian moments of life in Mexico (“when dawn arrives/ with her furious scent of bolillos,/ orange peels, and.../ Fabuloso” and “my heart... a peeled mango bearing an emerald housefly”) act as both description and invitation. In short, lyrical poems, Cisneros juggles religion (“God Breaks the Heart Again and Again until It Stays Open”), humor (“I Should Like to Fall in Love with a Burro Named Saturnino”), and politics (“A Boy with a Machine Gun Waves to Me”). In keeping with the book’s title, these poems bare her past in the more personal work about sex (“You Better Not Put Me in a Poem” begins with a list of images of previous lovers’ penises: “a curved scimitar,” “a fat tamale plug,” and “a baby pacifier”), about almost dying (“Year of My Near Death”), and about aging (“This loss of the/ right ear’s hearing,/ No cross.// I only half listen/ Anyhow.”) These plainspoken, affecting poems reveal a writer fortified by a sometimes difficult past who has come to embrace the freedom that comes with self-acceptance.