Thursday, January 14, 2021

PopMatters Juan Felipe Herrera Review Excerpted at City Lights

PopMatters Juan Felipe Herrera Review Excerpted at City Lights 

http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100162250&fa=reviews

Published December 2020



PopMatters -- Best Books of the Year
Dec 11, 2020

"Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera's Every Day We Get More Illegal, seems to foretell a diatribe vibe, but threaded throughout his verse is the musicality—the calming, invigorating melodies that remind us, ever so sweetly, if insistently: Latino lives are beloved. Of course, versified tirades would be understandable and even welcome in such a collection—after all, Latinos are invaluable members of US society who number 60 million in population, yet are ever-demonized politically, with a huge underclass that is often overlooked in the American economy, and vulnerable to abuse. But the fact that Herrera steers clear of outright anger in his verse is an inspiring testament to the indomitable spirit of many Latinos. It also reflects the poet's inimitable ability to transmute personal outrage into rousing literary songs."— Alison Ross



Feature on PopMatters
Dec 1, 2020

"When I saw Juan Felipe Herrera perform his verse in Atlanta a few years back, I was struck by the musicality of his delivery. Herrera, the first Mexican-American Poet Laureate (2015-2017), has a jovial, Zen-like presence that simultaneously calms and invigorates. . .. "—Alison Ross

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