Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Pandemia & Other Poems



Introducing Pandemia & Other Poems by Edward Vidaurre, scheduled to be released in August, 2020. Vidaurre’s writings have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times Magazine, The Texas Observer, Grist, Poet Lore, The Acentos Review, Poetrybay, Voices de la Luna, as well as other journals and anthologies. Vidaurre is the author of six collections of poetry. He is the 2018-2019 City of McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate, a four-time Pushcart-nominated poet and publisher of FlowerSong Press. Vidaurre is from Boyle Heights, California and now resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife and daughter.


Praise for Pandemia & Other Poems 

Pandemia & Other Poems is the book we need right now. Edward Vidaurre’s tender, wise, jazz-singer words rise up and speak for this pandemic period when we realize our lungs connect us—and our stories and our songs. His poems move bird-like from coffee in the morning with mockingbirds to children “in tent cities, still, still.” Vidaurre can make you laugh out loud in one breath and break your heart the next. He tells us “I want to die trying/and try living,” and he does—with enough pain, generosity and imaginative energy to make you remember why our lives matter. 

—Sheila Black 


Pandemia & Other Poems is a new scripture for the plague years. Unabashedly bi-lingual and pan-cultural, a creation myth in the face of destruction, a seed of renacimiento in our charred garden. It echoes the great Raza voices while reaching deep into far older roots as it leaps into the future. This is the real deal. 

—Luis Alberto Urrea 


Pandemia & Other Poems is a road map of sorts where the poet lets us in on his dreams that offer hope, and his questions about the future give us all places to start coming up with answers. I highly recommend you take time to savor this poet-seers verses. Ase O! 

—Odilia Galván Rodríguez 


Edward Vidaurre tiene corazón, he cares, he is compassionate, he embraces the life we are all living at this time. He dares to move with hope, dreams and this prism in your hands — he sees and “works through the ghostly streets of uncertainty.” Enter his word streets, his pioneering stepping poems — Jazz poetry, the homeless, Covid -19, Black Lives Matter, GenZ, his inner lives, and his walking with all of our lives. This is the book to keep close to your heart. Libro Bravo, Corazón of love. 

—Juan Felipe Herrera










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