>>Boomerang

ISBN: 978-1-931010-53-5
112 pp. | paper | $12.00

poetry by Brenda Cárdenas

In Boomerang, Brenda Cárdenas creates a vibrant, syncretic space open to many voices, perspectives, and tongues. Here, whatever is made is in motion. Cárdenas casts a line of English, and it returns to her in Spanish. She spins lyrically taut free verse; sculpts prose poems, sapphics, and sonnets; and punches the rhythms of spoken word in what Juan Felipe Herrera has called "a sonic calligraphy, hand-thrown spirals of spirit." Whether telling stories of displaced peoples and places, responding to Chicano art, or meditating on language itself, Cárdenas strikes a deliberately tenuous balance between self-assurance and loss, all the while on a journey toward the interconnectedness that she calls home.

Brenda Cárdenas's chapbook of poetry From the Tongues of Brick and Stone was published by Momotombo Press in 2005. She also coedited Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest (2001). Her work has appeared in a range of publications including Achiote Seeds , The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century, The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry, U.S. Latino Literature Today, Prairie Schooner, RATTLE: Poetry for the 21 st Century , and Poetry Daily , among others. With Sonido Ink(quieto), a spoken word and music ensemble, she coproduced and released the CD Chicano, Illnoize: The Blue Island Sessions (2001). Cárdenas is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.