Endorsements and Reviews

In these stunning poems, memory and myth collide. Wild horses bound, galaxies glow, time is taunted, and “the whole cliched story” of desire is rewritten with thrilling intimacy. Guerrero-Murphy’s work inhabits both the concrete and the delightfully abstract.

—Speer Morgan, editor, The Missouri Review. Fall 2019.

Carol Guerrero-Murphy’s poems are earthly and unearthly, fierce and generous, and brimming with enduring meaning. In Chained Dog Dreams her brilliant “Birth Epic” illuminates the nature of giving birth as the act resists language and turns the mother herself into a warrior and survivor. The most telling moments of a life emerge with new clarity through the focusing lens of this poet’s attentive sensibility and astonishing craft.

—Lee Upton, author Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems. No Mercy won the National Poetry Series.

These gorgeous poems speak of politics, family, motherhood, animals, landscape—with the foundation of honesty, grace, and above all else, mercy. This collection is a quietly moving, deeply felt look at our vulnerable world, our vulnerable souls.

– Laura Pritchett, author Sky Bridge winner of the PEN USA award.

Guerrero-Murphy has given her readers a rhythmic and beautiful paean to a world blessed by rain, flowers, the prayer and religion of horses as well as the power and pain of family, womanhood and personal history.  These poems take the reader from desert to grassland, from the bloom of childhood to the shadow and wisdom of adult knowing, always lingering at the heart sound of redemption and grace, even in the midst of the tragic and impure. Chained Dog Dreams is the work of a poet whose soul is full, whose life is both mirror and salvation.

–Aaron Abeyta, author of 4 books of poetry including Colcha (winner Colorado Book Award and American Book Award) and the novel Rise, Do Not Be Afraid.