Canticle of Idols was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize (2006).  Artist and Cave Canem fellow, JoAnne McFarland, provides the cover art:  “Little Cullud Doll”.  Peter Dressel, photographer, writer and musician, shot author photographs.

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The first 25 online customers will also receive a free, limited edition chapbook from the next book, The Snake Uncoiling.

What others are saying about Canticle of Idols

“Raina León is a fiery and courageous poet. The poems in this, her first collection, are explosions of pain and transcendence, jagged epiphanies, surreal, haunting, erotic and anguished by turns. Whether challenging Catholic orthodoxy or celebrating her Afro-Puerto Rican legacy, remembering the struggles of an addict or the touch of a lover, León’s poetry sings hymns to life in the midst of death. Listen.”

--Martín Espada, professor at University of Massachusetts-Amherst and author of The Republic of Poetry and Alabanza:  New and Selected Poems 1982 - 2002

“There is something of Eden adhering to any first book.  Raina Leon brings us lyric reports from a place where Adam the name-giver meets Juana la Loca.  "what's your name / the ones who know are dead"  Readers can only hope that she is able to keep some of that moist earth visible around her roots.  She'll need it.  We'll need it.  "Sculptors chisled my feet / on the Devil's neck" she writes.  That would be the devil we know.  What we don't yet know, she just might help us learn.”

 

--A.L. Nielsen, first winner of the Larry Neal Award and author of Heat Strings and Reading Race

“Here is the work of a poet who possesses the graceful sensuality of dusk & the unflinching eye of the butcher. One senses here, that Leon is committed to pulling back the red curtains of our historical, familial, cultural mythologies, & rendering what is found there into deep song. The result is a landscape of lyrical acuity fueled by a myriad of languages, characters, & centers. These poems give us the voice of The Marys, the sister, abuela 'Buela, the lovers. In Leon, you have an Orpheic poet who dives into the underworld of every thing--& comes back with the news.”

--Aracelis Girmay, author of Teeth

“What wonderful ideas and moods a keen, artistic observer provides. Raina Leon writes with a sense of grace and awareness of details that magnifies with elegant clarity. Through the lens of her verses, those seemingly small things appear larger, more pronounced; here, what was distant becomes close, closer. Hers is a poetic voice that deserves our attention.”  

­-Howard Rambsy II, professor and literary critic, Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville