I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New and Selected Poems

Laurie Ann Guerrero

Texas Christian University Press, Mar 25, 2021 - Poetry - 96 pages

This collection of Guerrero's new and selected work documents the struggle to both honor and disrupt cultural, social, and familial traditions and histories. Hers is an honest and fearless examination of racism, sexism, domestic abuse, illness, and loss.

Feminist writer, mother, and educator, Guerrero has been described by the San Antonio Current as "a badass of poetic proportions." In her poems, bodies sway "above the cotton like sheets on a line," women turn into roosters, grief is carried like a newborn, snake venom is made in the marrow of the atlas bone, and the greatest revolution is "to sing graveside, to whisper intention into bowls of beans, to dance / without fear or fight." With her unfailingly bold imagery and sharp eye, this collection of Guerrero's work is a carefully constructed artifact by a poet who works and thinks with her hands.

This volume is the fourteenth in the TCU Press Texas Poet Laureate series.

About the author

LAURIE ANN GUERRERO is the author of Tongue in the Mouth of the Dying (Notre Dame 2013) and A Crown for Gumecindo (Aztlan Libre 2015). Poet Laureate of San Antonio (2014-2016) and of Texas (2016-2017), Guerrero holds degrees from Smith College and Drew University and is the Writer-in-Residence at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.

Bibliographic information

• Title: I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake: New and Selected Poems; TCU Texas poets laureate series
• Author: Laurie Ann Guerrero
• Contributor: Martín Espada
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Texas Christian University Press, 2021
• ISBN: 087565746X, 9780875657462
• Length: 96 pages
• Subjects: Poetry / American / General; Poetry / Women Authors