Songs for the Land-Bound

My favorite poems from Violeta Garcia-Mendoza’s book are: * Parable Of The Swallows * Dear Deserter, Dear Disaster * Song Of Past Selves * Ode To Unmown Grass * Common Starling * Cento Drawn From Conversations With My Daughter * Lockdown Minecraft * God In The Children’s Hospital * Insomnia * Talkin......more

This breathtaking collection is one of the best poetry books I’ve read in a very long time. I would have read it in one sitting if my dog hadn’t interrupted for a walk! Her line work is beyond beautiful, but the tone and recurrent imagery strike a stunning balance between grief and hope. So many of......more

This debut poetry collection, available September 2024, is indeed luminous, as the back cover indicates. Violeta Garcia-Mendoza has a gorgeous command of language as she navigates "the constraints and anxieties of midlife in the midst of climate breakdown, of motherhood in a period of personal and p......more

I love these gorgeous poems, so deeply rooted in close observation of the natural world but enmeshed, also, in the chaos of domestic family life. I loved the poems listing collective nouns for fathers and mothers; Instructions for the At-Home Poet and Housekeeping Secrets. “Motherhood is an everyday......more

The combination of deep joy, exhaustion, overwhelm, and fear that is motherhood is perfectly captured in these poems. The poem "God In The Children's Hospital" slayed me. I also appreciated the juxtaposition of incessant screen time with images of the natural world as a great description of life in......more