PIEDRA, a new collection of poems by Luis Alberto Urrea
¿That which cannot be destroyed - so it is, this is Urrea's Piedra Tao, Urrea's third eye swiveling across the cosmos & canyons, timeless in "this kernel of corn," an endless spiraling prayer of the rezanderas, an inky rosario of vision heat, caminatas, a sitting on the "oldest stone on the earth," as he writes he throws his arms up, cracks open his chest to the night stars and the sacred blaze of the "angel factory" - he chants, he whispers, tender and ragged on the "curve of cerulean blue" the poems, the book. The "Piedra," "arises "wild and free," this is ocean magic, restitched sizzling bullets of Zapata, you will eat seashell and taste "Belgian stamps," you will lean on wild wolves, smell their pelts, you will "feed iguanas," you will eat at the restaurant of Urrea's mysteries, unlock their ancient honeyed lips and smear your face upon them and their shadows will come to you and you will enter the life and lives of the blinking elements of Piedra consciousness forever. I absolutely love this book, these poems, these short-line and long-line, night and dawn painted teachings. An incredible pyramid and temple of word magic. Bravissimo! No doubt, no return. -Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, Emeritus

Luis Alberto Urrea is a 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and the best-selling author of 19 books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. He's been honored with a Pushcard Prize, an American Academy of Arts & Letters award and an Edgar Award. His most recent book is The House of Broken Angels, a NYTimes Notable Book of the year, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Aware. His novel Into the Beautiful North is a selection of the NEA Big Reads program. Urrea's novel based on his mother's WWII experiences, Good Night, Irene, will be published in May 2023 by Little, Brown. He is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois-Chicago.