Critical Commentary
Carol Guerrero-Murphy’s poems are earthly and unearthly, fierce and generous, and brimming with enduring meaning. In Chained Dog Dreams her brilliant “Birth Epic” illuminates the nature of giving birth as the act resists language and turns the mother herself into a warrior and survivor. The most telling moments of a life emerge with new clarity through the focusing lens of this poet’s attentive sensibility and astonishing craft.—Lee Upton, author Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems. No Mercy won the National Poetry Series.
These gorgeous poems speak of politics, family, motherhood, animals, landscape—with the foundation of honesty, grace, and above all else, mercy. This collection is a quietly moving, deeply felt look at our vulnerable world, our vulnerable souls.– Laura Pritchett, author of novels, essays, articles, including Sky Bridge, winner of the PEN USA and Milkweed awards.
Guerrero-Murphy has given her readers a rhythmic and beautiful paean to a world blessed by rain, flowers, the prayer and religion of horses as well as the power and pain of family, womanhood and personal history. These poems take the reader from desert to grassland, from the bloom of childhood to the shadow and wisdom of adult knowing, always lingering at the heart sound of redemption and grace, even in the midst of the tragic and impure. Chained Dog Dreams is the work of a poet whose soul is full, whose life is both mirror and salvation.--Aaron Abeyta, author of 4 books of poetry including Colcha (winner Colorado Book Award and American Book Award) and the novel Rise, Do Not Be Afraid.
I like your poems because they are genuine. I think an awful lot of poetry (like every other form of art) isn't. Your stuff seems pretty real to me. I just finished Chained Dog Dreams and I would like to add the word "generous" to the previous "genuine". It felt like taking a life supplement, almost- sort of like a vitamin B shot for the spirit. Thank you. George Parrish, songwriter, reader.
"In Table Walking at Nighthawk, I find a deep virtue unique in American poetry now, a virtue that is also a technique raised high: the Panoramic. Guerrero-Murphy understands, and loves, the sheer scale of Time as it is lived in increments, of Landscape as it is carefully traversed by fragile lives. This is redemptive writing, a joy to know."--Donald Revell.
"[This] fine first collection creates a compellingly complex and lyrical world infused by ancestral, mythic, and dearly familial voices that weave together the literary and the intimate"--Kathryn Winograd.
