“Michelle Otero’s Bosque poems fuel multifarious definitions, including definitions of givers, art-makers, makers, and even the color brown. At the core of the poetry project is the consistent defiance to restrictive definitions and a call to recognize that we, just like water, are fluid.”—Melinda Zepeda, Latino Book Review
“Ultimately, this is a collection full of praise poems, full of gratitude for herbs and rain, librarians and storytellers, brothels and the circus. The poet acts as chronicler of a place and all of its times.”—Carla Panciera, Mom Egg Review
“Michelle Otero reveals the palette of the color brown throughout this magnificent collection of poetry that celebrates the people and landscape of her upbringing. A must read, Bosque quenches the spirit in time of drought. It is bound to be a classic of Chicanx literature.”—Demetria Martínez, author of Mother Tongue
“Michelle Otero’s Bosque is profoundly New Mexican, as vast as our desert and as deep as our canyons. These poems hold us in their arms and draw us into the poet’s multicultural, multilingual heart.”—Margaret Randall, author of I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary
“Michelle Otero’s poetry reminds me how to see with my heart. Her attention to detail rooted me to a place of meditation, a story I never knew I needed in my life, an afterlife. A third of the way in, she asks, ‘What is the cure for sand / in the throat?’ and replies with an answer we already know but couldn’t hear because we were so disconnected from the earth. Bosque is inventive, crisp, patient, ornate, and a delight to walk through. Otero got my heart to see again.”—Anel I. Flores, author of Empanada: A Lesbiana Story en Probaditas
“Praise these poems, praise the poet, praise Michelle Otero. In times like these, ‘when we stand together / by standing apart, holding our touch / for another time,’ it is poetry like this that helps keep us stitched at the heart-seams of our lives. Sown during her tenure as Albuquerque Poet Laureate, Michelle planted truth and harvested transformation. ‘You were hierba buena / You were hierba del manso.’ Her poems are a tincture for the soul. We will suckle these words of faith, healing, and redemption like caldo from a grandmother’s fingertips.”—Levi Romero, Inaugural New Mexico Poet Laureate and author of A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works
