Amber McCrary’s Blue Corn Tongue: Poems in the Mouth of the Desert connects Colorado Plateau to the Sonoran Desert and invokes the places, plants, and people of Diné Bikéyah and O’odham in a deeply honest exploration of love, memory, and intimacy confronting the legacy of land violence in these desert homelands.

McCrary is of the Kin Łichíí’nii clan, born for the Naakaii Dine’é clan. Her maternal grandfather is the Áshįįhí clan and her paternal grandfather is the Ta’neeszahnii clan. In her debut collection, this poet brings together DIY zine aesthetics, life forms of juniper and mountains, and the beauty of Diné Bizaad to tell of the enduring bonds between people and place.

Looking for poems in Spanish and English and written by a poet on the 2024 National Book Award list? We have that! 

Octavio Quintanilla captures the perilous journeys that migrants undertake crossing borders as well as the paths that lovers forge to meet their endless longing in Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours. These themes are skillfully woven by Quintanilla, guiding us back and forth across the Rio Grande to encounter the apparitions of the disappeared and to witness the willingness of many to risk life and limb for a better life.

This new poetry collection comprises lyric and concrete poems—or frontextos—that explore intimacy and different shades of violence as a means to reconcile the speaker’s sense of belonging in the world. Las Horas Imposibles won the 2024 Ambroggio Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

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