I Have Eaten the Rattlesnake; New and Selected Poems (Hardcover)

Author: Laurie Ann Guerrero

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press (2021)

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.