Piñata Theory by Chazaro, Alan 2024 NEUF

"Cante Jundo, or Deep Song, is what Garcia Lorca called poetry attached to the rhythms and waves of a continent, its people, its waters, its history. In Alan Chazaros PINATA THEORY, those resonances echo across the field between the countries of your body, the shared stories of cousin-cultures stretching across manmade boundaries. Ive become a borderland of tongues, writes Chazaro, a mezcla of eyes. Here is the pinata, unbroken, containing, holding together all the promise of youth and imagination. When it spills, it spills lavishly and generously its treasures."

-D A Powell

"The great American philosopher Jay Z once said, You cant heal / what you dont reveal. Such is the ethos of this debut collection. Pugilistic, unflinchingly honest, and damn right gorgeous, PINATA THEORY no se raja in decirnos how broken we are, how broken weve been. Alan takes the hyphen in Mexican-American, this unruly papier-mache weve inherited, and clothes the hollow of us. So before leafing this book, dear reader, take a breath-for your sake, for those who still cant breathe. Stomach his hard-hitting truth, because We were made for beatdowns. This some strong shit, as blunt as a spliffed Swisher, as the dusty 2x4s wed wield at dangling dulce. Whenever you ready, step inside this circle of homies. Were cheering on our Yay Area champ as he plants both feet in this poetry world. Its his turn. And as he swings for our freedom, sing like we did as kids, Dale dale dale, no pierdas el tino."

-Antonio Lopez

"We dont get to witness a root as it reaches out and absorbs from all around itself. But PINATA THEORY by Alan Chazaro is evidence of this Mexican-American navigation-it is the bud and the strange blossom that doesnt resist itself like Xicanos sometimes do. And in this way, it is like the serious ache a family joke leaves. Its the men watching other men cry, lost gold teeth and the person that misses it, the thoughts loose like dogs on the street and how in their wildness, we must honor them. These poems reverb under the skin but not necessarily in the colonized body. The speaker in this collection knows better than to make their body fully responsible for the world. And yet, they know where they participate. They dont live with dust in [their] eyes, or with unaccounted admiration for life. PINATA THEORY is a record of layer, and speaks of us in a humor that is pure pocho-dimensional. Its truth is a deep wound and the fuck it that follows. And still, each poem seems to be written in a special wonder that gathers itself from many places inside the speakers one body, one root."

-Sara Borjas