Critical Commentary
“In Pity the Drowned Horses, Sheryl Luna carves out of the El Paso landscape the music of the borderlands, where loss and acceptance converge like the jagged bodies of the U.S. and Mexico: “I long for the grimy heat, / the Rio Grande’s shallow passage, / the blue desert, and the slick legs of runners / along the smoggy highway.” Hers is “the way to truth,” but such truths can be costly: “And I am dry as an American can be.” Luna exquisitely captures—like no other poet before her—the “unsung positive capability / of the desert;” her syntax—sometimes raw and edgy—creates a tableau where everything rushes toward “our wild need—all sweat, all shiver.” The overall effect is simply mesmerizing: “Even the moon offers its solace like a lover / that will never leave.” (Robert Vasquez: author of At the Rainbow)
- Library Journal
“In her opening poem, Luna declares that "pain is living and living is pain," but while she relentlessly probes the hardscrabble lives of many of America's Latinos, these poems aren't grim reading. They're transfigured by this debut author's extraordinary lyric power.” (Library Journal, copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
- El Paso Times Review
- Latino L.A. Review
- Magnificent Errors
