Boomerang: POEMS

In Boomerang, Brenda Cárdenas creates a vibrant, syncretic space open to many voices, perspectives, and tongues. Here, whatever is made is in motion. Cárdenas casts a line of English, and it returns to her in Spanish. She spins lyrically taut free verse; sculpts prose poems, sapphics, and sonnets; and punches the rhythms of spoken word in what Juan Felipe Herrera has called "a sonic calligraphy, hand-thrown spirals of spirit." Whether telling stories of displaced peoples and places, responding to Chicano art, or meditating on language itself, Cárdenas strikes a deliberately tenuous balance between self-assurance and loss, all the while on a journey toward the interconnectedness that she calls home.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Brenda writes with the serious and sensual delight of a belling-dancing bruja shaman woman…There are no borders between the dead and the living, lovers and strangers, intellect and body heat, Nahuatl and Caló, official text and love-sound…Cárdenas is a synthesizer tuned to Lorca, Anzaldúa, Guillén Celan, Cortázar, Burciaga, and Coyote. At a time when minimalist text and line are the dominant poetics, Brenda Cárdenas dissolves ancient monuments and sets the meter for the new boom!” -Juan Felipe Herrera, United States Poet Laureate, 2015-2017

“Cardenas' bilingual poems are very skillful; the Spanish weaves seamlessly with the English. I think her poem, ‘Abuelo y sus cuentos: Origin of the Bird-Beak Mole’ is a perfect bilingual poem and my favorite in the collection. Other favorites are ‘Sound Waves: Tono-D,’ ‘Cartoon Coyote Goes Po-Mo,’ and ‘Feast.’ -John Olivares Espinoza, author of The Date Fruit Elegies, on Goodreads