A beautiful and heart-wrenching book. Urrea is my new author crush.

--I don't believe anymore, I don't believe,I'm not convinced that the temple ever earned my heart,that life isn't better than this sacrifice,that I am a slave to be butchered,that I am born to die up there like my fatherswho built the temple with stoneson their backs:I cannot believenot for a minutethat I must submitand only ever hopeto leave behind methis poem.-from Teocalli Blues (for Santino Rivera)"Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem" is a perfect end piece. Soundtrack suggested by "48...

Contemporary poetry is always a hard read for me - I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes rhyme schemes, poetic forms, etc - but this collection from Urrea is wonderful. Bleak, hopeful, brutal, sarcastic, truthful, and one 22page poem about a bowling alley (or his dad?). Several poems are entirely in Spanish, I was able to pick through them but I definitely missed things in those poems. I heard echoes of things I've heard him say during interviews. Beautiful

Just discovered this poet. Love love love this.

Beautiful. For the tatted up vato in his slaughterhouse boots on the #42 that always watched out for me even if he never said a word.I love you

The poetry in this collection was very diverse. The structure of the poems were unique and they altered in each individual poem. The structure often alters more than once in one poem. I felt a wide range of emotions while reading this collection: sadness, happiness, hope, and longing. The characters/stories presented are all unique. There is Mexican imagery and American imagery. The book not only portrays what it's like to live in a border town, but it complicates the idea of a border town. It d...

Bury meAmong tired menWho smell too badTo enter banks.Bury meBeside WomenOld at 23Who stoopTo garbage gardensTo pull bonesFrom the ruinsFor soup.Bury meAmong childrenYou have spit onIn fieldsOf shattered glass.Pick there for my nameLike the ibisAfter mustard seeds.Give me backTo the poor.So much identity inside a little book. Probably one of the best poetry collections I've read in a while.

Great range of style and a fresh voice. Favorite poems: - Listen - Typewriter- 48 Roadsongs (flash poems while driving 1-70, etc)- Definition

This is a fine collection of poetry, ranging from stories of the past to contemporary rages against people who see children at the border and carrying signs that read, "Not my children. Not my problem." Urrea dedicates this book "For these children we have spit on. May they rise." And the best of these poems, infused with this rage, are like white hot righteous protests against the darkness. The loss of so many children to murders in gang wars, to prostitution, to anything, are also honored, the...

Great poetry! The first few really moved me--made me angry, so I couldn't read them before bed. Lots of good imagery.

Tijuana Book of the Dead is incredible. The poems ranged from funny to beautiful to sad to contemplative. There's something for all tastes. I found myself rushing to "Google Translate" to understand the Spanish ones - it makes me want to learn Spanish! I'm kind of picky about poetry. Some poets are too ethereal to be coherent, but these poems have feet. They are grounded in real life and all of them give you something to think about. I would highly recommend it.

While the themes are most timely, the verse is often ancient and likewise intoxicating. I read a number of these poems on the banks of the Ohio, while the heat index bounced above 103F. Much of the verse refers to vato culture, the desert, the mistrust and the loneliness -- there's a brutal sublimity. We can cite the poet Zimmerman, I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home. The milieu is proletarian and largely taciturn. There is a pluck to people's lives, also an ambition --...

An exquisite collection by Luis Alberto Urrea. There was some very heavy and disturbing material in the first couple of poems (human trafficking, abuse), and l proceeded cautiously - but many other poems are lighter in nature: landscapes, travel, and observations. The sprawling "16Lanes" details growing up, bowling alleys, and his father. DefinitionIllegal alien, adj./n.A term by which An invading colonial forceVilifiesIndigenous culturesBy identifying them as An invading colonial force Majori...

In honor of National Poetry Month this April, I picked up this engrossing book of poetry at the library-- and I highly recommend it from the opening poem, "You Who See Grace from a Distracted God" about a working man or women's plight told in long, hypnotizing phrases to "Incident Report" about being a Mexican immigrant in a public library, these poems speak to now. They are about: immigrants, the dispossessed, all of us who struggle to make sense, make a living, made a life, in America. I salut...

Having recently moved to Texas, I wanted to get acquainted with new poets living and/or writing about the Southwest, especially the towns bordering Mexico. I happened upon this book in the library and took it home. Let me say that I loved it. Urea's poems can make you laugh and make you cry. This collection made me want to go out and read everything else he's ever written. Thumbs up for me.

I'm not a big fan of the author in general but like this volume of poetry the use of Spanglish read much more fluid than his novels. much more from the heart. I'm sure these are relatos he "borrowed" from Tijuana residents but nonetheless they touching.

For those of us who were impressed by Urrea's vivid, heart-wrenching journalism in The Devil's Highway, this poetry collection offers a more intimate look into the life and mind of one of the greatest borderland authors of our time.

Visceral, whether in English or Spanish. Too hard, at times, to face, which makes you realize you must face it. A stanza from one of my favorites, Lines for Neruda:The first poem I readwas the ragged V scrawledin a brown sky by gullsescaping the garbage dump at sunsetcutting under cloudsover the apartment blocksgoing to a sea I knewwas there across the citybut never saw.So much justice and so much gut here.

Border poetry to memorialize the oppression of The Cartel, the last book I read.Reminiscent of Richard Brautigan. Here's part of one, most are not as dark as this.Siege CommuniquéIn Tijuana. they said Juárez was the pueblo where oldwhores went to die, where25 cents bought fleshby the river, nobody loved you, Sister—so close to Texastso far fromRevolución.Today, they sayyou are the cementerioof hope: the only cropin your garden of RíoGrande mud is bullets,is machetes, isacid baths for bones,chor...

I am so bad at appreciating poetry but what I can say about this collection is that I love the visceral, rolling nature of it ; of the way Urrea mixes brutal punches of staccato lines with long, windingly lyrical lines, and how he brings Mexico and East LA of vivid life with emotive descriptions