“Redwork”
By Laurie Ann Guerrero.
Oct. 2026. 132p. illus. Autumn House.
Former poet laureate of both San Antonio and Texas, Guerrero threads together and pulls apart the many roles women play in family, art, and work in her extraordinary fifth collection. Every page thrums with lightning intensity, as, with eyes-wide-open honesty, Guerrero tackles difficult subjects, such as the stubborn reticence of elders (“The grandmothers know what the trees know, / but they’re not speaking either”), the complicated feelings between mother and son (“You will want / to leave me. I will want / to let you”), and the otherworldly sensations of embodiment (“I stood / in a body that had plans. All I knew / was to look for mouths to feed.”) Taking its title from a striking style of outline embroidery, the book includes numerous pieces of Guerrero’s own handicraft, which live almost as needlework poems on the pages themselves: the bright red stitches of “I Do Not Leave You” shape the capillaries of an outstretched arm; French knots radiate outward in “Anatomy of the Breast.” Ever a poet of visceral symbolism, Guerrero’s crimson imagery resurfaces throughout, whether the speaker dreams herself a pomegranate (“jeweled / honeycomb, little wombs buzzing, a seeded market in red”) or raises the knife’s edge to a quivering beet (“I expect blood out of each piece.”) An inimitable masterwork by a poet in her prime.— Diego Báez
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