Speaking Wiri Wiri
"Vera's book couldn't come at a better time, with immigration reform and LGBT issues at the forefront of the national debate....Writing with authority, assurance and passion, Vera's Speaking Wiri Wiri earns him his rightful place alongside his poetry heroes."  Florida Agenda"The book, Vera's second full-length collection, consists of forty-five poems in five distinct sections.  Taken as a whole--without the "borders," if you will--there is a cohesive voice and message." Out Smart"Vera writes so we know how it was for him, and that makes us more alive too. He makes story link to poetry so that it matters to others. He allows the writing to evolve voluntarily and doesn't push to persuade; letting people, sights, tastes, smells do the talking." Washington Independent Review of Books“Dan Vera is a poet haunted by memory, haunted by place, haunted by words.  Of course, these are the wellsprings of poetry in general, but in Vera’s case there is the added complication of having been born to Cuban parents in South Texas, a bastion of Mexican-American culture where cubanidad (so prevalent in Miami) might be as rare as Turkishness… As a poet driven to reconstruct the fragments of memory, just as an archeologist rebuilds ancient ruins, Vera knows that any possible reconnection to the past depends on a prescient understanding of the copious interplay between language and culture, made more lush still by the mediation of his Romantic imagination… Another person would have avoided this agonistic search for his roots (both linguistically and culturally), but Vera chose instead to persevere in connecting with his ancestral homeland, and I can only explain this doggedness as the result of a deep familial bond, an emotional debt that has to be repaid with poetry and poetry alone.”—Orlando Menes“Dan Vera’sSpeaking Wiri Wirikeeps traveling across the ‘false borders of men’ into ‘memory of the tongue.’ These poems—paeans to his Cuban family, heritage, history—testify to the thundering power of words. Whether Spanish, lost and found, or English, familiar and strange, these poems evoke the various ways that language exiles us and embodies the indelible past—who we are, where we came from, how we know. Like Vera’s monarch butterfly and Queen Anne’s lace— this collection wanders from otro lado to this side and back—defying the impossible logic of fences.” —Valerie Martínez, author ofAnd They Called It HorizonandEach and Her“These poems are charged with a poignant longing and the kind of humor that grins as it bleeds. Moving through a mélange of memories seen more clearly, more tenderly from a present that is distant and not so distant,Speaking Wiri Wiriis also a careful look at the untraceable impacts of the words that surround us. Each of us—whether we mean to or not—looks back to find out where we are and why we are what we are. Dan Vera’s new collection operates as a kind of soulful blueprint for this search.”—Tim Seibles, author ofFast Animal“…there is no gibberish to be found in Vera’sLetras Latinas-winning poetry collection. Rather, there is much to inspire awe and provoke reflection… Pleasing language permeates this book… there’s so much here to recommendSpeaking Wiri Wiri, that it’s difficult to find fault with this wonderful collection.”—Lambda Literary Review