“Welcome to Maroon — a mysterious island of words that is also an imagistic firecracker continually exploding before our astonished, eyes. Angela Peñaredondo’s cast adrift speaker is at times an actor, a tourist, a bemused visitor to her (un)homeland(s) and a shipwrecked child remembering family lost and recovered through the acts of traveling and remembering. The ports of call on this circuitous journey range from Manila to Havana to Kansas City to Los Angeles and beyond. But we are never lost. As we read these gorgeous poems, we travel a complex transnational space with a witty, perceptive poet, who — like a postmodern Virgil — leads us across a terrain at once tragic and inspiring, where we find family resemblances in the faces of strangers. “
–Stephanie Barbé Hammer, author of The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior & How Formal?

Angela Peñaredondo’s Maroon is intoxicating. Luscious image, wholly steeped in salty sensuality, simmering fervor deftly choreographed with dizzying divinations, all tied up with slipknot presages, memory, truth – this book is a sweet copper rum, rich and ready to quench. Maroon is music, resounding, resonant slake. Drink, drink deep.
–Allison Adele Hedge Coke, author of Streaming

The voice in this collection is irresistible: strong and lyric, tender and controlled: “I have not heard the rumble of monsoon in days / but if steam is to rise from this hot earth / then tumble, now is the time.” I cannot wait to read more from this poet.
–Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level
In her brilliant debut chapbook, Maroon, Angela Penaredondo writes, in an address to the sea, “I have fallen/ in love with a diver/ already dead. And you/ bring him to me?” As I read these poems, I kept thinking of Prufrock’s mermaids, his fear that they will not sing to him. In this lush, deeply inventive, musically alive collection, Penaredondo morphs into one of T.S. Eliot’s “sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown.” This is her gorgeous incantation before and after the drowning. Listen.
–Allison Benis White, author of Small Porcelain Headick here to edit.

The voice in this collection is irresistible: strong and lyric, tender and controlled: “I have not heard the rumble of monsoon in days / but if steam is to rise from this hot earth / then tumble, now is the time.” I cannot wait to read more from this poet.
–Meg Day, author of Last Psalm at Sea Level