Pity the Drowned Horses

by Sheryl Luna

Pity the Drowned Horses is the winner of the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. This collection is about place and many of the poems in it are set in the desert southwest on the U.S./Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. Sheryl Luna’s poems are also about family and home within the broader context of the border as both a bridge and a barrier. They deal with the bilingual and bicultural city and how a place is longed for and viewed very differently as the observer changes and experiences other cultures. The first two sections of poems focus on home and family. They show that, despite poverty and geographical isolation, the border towns of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are places of beauty and promise. The third section explores how anxiety over aesthetic judgments, values, and difference are negotiated. The final section is one of praise and recognition that despite differences we are all longing for faith and a place to call home.

Genres: Poetry

84 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author writes about growing up in the borderlands of the southwest and other topics. A wide range of emotions and images are in this collection of poems. You don't need your secret poetry decoder ring to appreciate these poems. Many wonderful scenes are described in an intimate way. No indulgence in the excess of sentimentality, rage, or an ideological agenda either. Bones, a portrait of older women is one of my favorites.

[Roz Ito · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luna is a poet who sees with the unflinching eye of a fearless fiction writer. Only these poems aren't make-believe... they are real, relentlessly real, and they spring from a real place that has been seared indelibly into the poet's memory and soul: the Chicano/a borderlands of El Paso, Texas. Luna writes about this sun-beaten, dusty geography, about its poverty and hardness, and most of all about the men and women who struggle to live in it, who wrestle daily with its unforgiving physical and social terrain and come to know endurance, labor, injustice, loss, defeat, defiance, determination, celebration, and grace. Luna is one of the few writers today of any genre who can grasp the gravity and urgency of a subject and render it, visceral and virtually unmediated, for the reader.

Despite their direct, realist language, these poems are anything but an easy read. Their emotional, psychological, and spiritual intensity may exhaust you at times and leave you walking around in a daze of humility and respect for some time afterward. Where other writers would be happy to stop and settle, Luna drives onward. Where others would make self-satisfied statements, she continues to question, and then questions her own questioning. She resists the temptation to draw ideological conclusions, yet the call for a political reckoning is powerful and implicit, in the context of a system that continues to segregate by class and race, and a border policy that continues to devalue the lives of the poor and unsung. Against this backdrop of systemic injustice, Luna spreads her canvas of poems and writes on with the utmost commitment and integrity.

[Christine Granados · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I like about Luna's work is that concrete images matter in her poetry and she adheres to the traditionalist poetry school of thought. She is a great under appreciated talent and considering the road she has traveled which is to say the streets of El Paso where not many get a high school education, much less a college degree, Sheryl’s talent and schooling speak volumes.

[Carmen Seda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been a favorite for many many years. The work honors women, the border, and fortitude. give yourself the gift of this book.

[J.W. Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poetry that tells of the deep longing inherent in being human. Nostalgic, poignant, descriptive of time and place, Sheryl Luna's poetry paints pictures of poverty and frailty instilled with strength and wisdom. This a volume with which you can linger or which you can consume quickly. Beautiful

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even eternity dies sometimes. I’d plunge myself
into proverbs if they’d work. I’d sing narcissus too,
if that would dance me back to magnolias or suns
but I’m a pauper and a lament.

In the spectrum of narrative and lyric, this collection leans more towards the narrative. Personally, I prefer a bit more of a lyrical flair, something that really lets me into the poet’s headspace. But for the most part, this collection paints a frustrated environment stricken with drought and poverty. A place difficult for hope to grow. A place that feels endless and inescapable. There were several poems I enjoyed here, especially the poems that echoed my own feelings of listlessness and agitation, but this collection didn’t “move” me like other collections have.