Tijuana Book of the Dead

January 19, 2015
Urrea (The Devil’s Highway) takes a mystic’s eye to lyrical poems of and about the U.S.-Mexico border. He has an undeniable technical skill and his poems move adroitly through rich images, using physicality to make history (personal, cultural, and national) immediately present. As one poem redolently states, “My sisters brought undocumented scents to sweeten/ the valleys. Their perfume settled on roadsides, misted/ over bloodstain, rattlesnake, bootprint, guard dog, flash/ light.” Likewise, Urrea displays accomplished movement in tight, driving narratives and poems that end with disarmingly succinct and arresting lines. The poet works through both horror and redemptive grit, and while the skill is consistent, the collection as whole would benefit from a trim, as the subject matter that engages at the start feels tired by conclusion. Even so, the book includes many moments of touching insight and poems that readers will rightfully celebrate. One such poem, “The Duck,” ends, “I left him/ to rest/ until/ he too/ rose/ to his own/ impossible/ going”; for moments like that, it’s worth it to keep reading.

February 15, 2015

Urrea, a Pulizer Prize finalist for the nonfiction The Devil's Highway and an award winner in fiction and poetry as well, offers what his publisher calls a kind of "love song" for life at the U.S.-Mexico border. Like Walt Whitman in his obsessive songs, Urrea tries to put readers in a rhythmic, aphoristic trance: "listen like saguaros listening/ to cactus wrens, coyotes, night/ owl: listen like the owl/ listen like the owl's prey/ jittery in rocks beneath bighorn's/ clocking feet." Urrea's facility with language (he writes in English and Spanish, at times in the same poem) and with sound is absolutely striking, but this book is 200 pages and six sections on the same treatise. VERDICT As Whitman's masterpiece can attest, such an outpouring necessitates some failures in the mix. That said, readers won't dispute Urrea's storytelling ability, as many of these poems are efficiently packaged narratives of seemingly real people at the real border, burdened with desire and pain and oppression, and even routine; nor will they be able to dispute this book's tremendous, thumping heart.--Stephen Morrow, Hilliard, OH

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2015
Author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, including the forthcoming story collection The Water Museum (2015), Urrea is known for his attention to historical detail and devotion to poor and working-class Latinos. This most recent book of poems pays homage to the bloodshed and homicide that has become a hallmark of American drug wars, transporting readers from the vast expanse of the Sonoran Desert to urban decay in downtown Chicago ( blossoms bust / open blacktop ruins where Cabrini / fell: xoxhitl dandelions bob ). Writing primarily in English, but also in Spanish and Spanglish, Urrea oscillates between brutal ultraviolence ( We who dangle nude / and burned from bridges ), rapturous beauty ( she molded moonglow into trinkets traded for coins the color / of sun ), and fanciful whimsy ( Orion / doing his slow / handstands / toward dawn ). Peppering lyrics with shoe polish, hair tonic, and wood varnish, Urrea echoes originators of Latino literature, such as Luis Valdez and Lalo Delgado, bridging literary generations in unflinching, evocative verse.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)