Karankawa
WINNER OF THE 2014 DONALD HALL PRIZE FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 2016 SOCIETY OF MIDLAND AUTHORS ANNUAL LITERARY AWARD
by Iliana Rocha, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015
Karankawa named one of 2015 Latino Books: 8 Must-Reads from Indispensable Small Presses by NBC Latino
Karankawa named one of 23 Essential New Books by Latino Poets by the Los Angeles Times
Praise for Karankawa
“These are the poems of a new fire. Raw fire makes a unique trail as it burns. They are fueled by a passionate, lyrical surrealism. This is a border politics kind of surrealism, emerging from a poetic sensibility in which there are no borders. This collection in essence embodies a fresh kind of creation story emerging from the Americas. It’s like reading Rimbaud for the first time. We are struck by an unabashed presence of a fearless singer.”
—Joy Harjo, judge
“Karankawa is memorable for a streaming imagery that carries us toward a shocking ancestral knowledge that is both intimate and a shout like the old song calling of the Apache. This work is so very strong in terms of the clarity of the messenger and an essential language like telegraph. This is an important and highly original collection of poems. A wonderful book!”
—Norman Dubie
“There is feast enough here in Rocha’s language, its sensuousness, its sass, its inventiveness, to delight any reader. These poems, rooted in the body and in Rocha’s Texas landscape, imaginatively explore the stories of our origins and the constant transformation of the self. ‘In your history, a tree is rebuilt,’ she writes. A compelling and memorable book.”
—Beckian Fritz Goldberg
“Karankawa is radically honest poetry, never beyond belief, its clarities and mysteries mutually deepening. In these diverse millennial visions arrive a fresh verse, and a vers, a “toward,” from far within. Harrowing revelations that begin then end with the body, brothers and fathers, transfiguring drag queens, broken friends, lost loves, all of us, here, now, creation’s numberless beginnings.”
