The Weight of Recognition

<p class=ql-align-justify>Maria Vasquez Boyd's poetry collection <em>The Weight of Recogntion</em> begins with the line At birth his tiny heart was replaced with a rabbits' heart. It is a jolting line given her disclosure of a heart condition. (All is better and getting better.) This is no lament but the words of a woman whose heart is the shape of a mourning dove/hunkered down in the wind. ... the shape of fists/that pummel locked doors. This is a poet alive in the world serving notice. Gentle hearts bend to carry parched souls/Back to the ground where desperate journeys begin. ... Hearts divided between two worlds who forge trails of tears/ and two paragraphs in history books. While Pragmatic men motionless/prefer sickness to the cure Boyd is The woman who decorates her forearms with henna instead of razor blades/considers flesh filled loops and spirals/like a walking hieroglyph awaiting translation. In Whisper Song one of many gems in this collection Boyd asks What offerings does one make to a soul whose journey is long and uncertain? The answer comes in the last line of the collection ... she leaned over the/cockpit/ and thanked the pilot for the ride.</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p> -Jose Faus is a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective and sits on the boards of </p><p> the Latino Writers Collective UMKC Friends of the Library Charlotte Street Foundation </p><p> and is president of the board of The Writers Place.</p><p><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Maria Vasquez Boyd's <em>The Weight of Recognition</em> is a fascinating poetic quest in which the poet asks whether the self (the shifting mask in the mirror) can be located by faith or doubt through her heritage or self-portrait in slow paint in romantic imagination or mundane experience (like mending pocket holes). Its chief recurring image is the human heart-like a fist a mouth a mourning dove hunkered down in wind; beating to the pizzicato of a clock; related to the monarch butterfly that the poet places inside her shirt. Boyd's collection features fresh imagery honest longing highly original use of language and-best of all-an epiphany of self-knowing.</p><p><br></p><p>-Linda M. Lewis<em> This Swirling Largesse </em></p><p><br></p><p>Maria Vasquez Boyd turns the reader into A person of magic who happily discovers / glass that shimmers / and sprouts / from a well-tended garden. This book is that garden. Precisely pruned and paired down so it's blooms can display the beauty in growth. </p><p> </p><p> -Huascar Medina 7th Poet Laureate of Kansas author of Un Mango Grows in Kansas City</p><p><br></p><p><em>The Weight of Redemption</em> by Maria Vasquez Boyd is an ethereal journey through stars and sky a book of heavenly and earthly bodies of imperfect hearts-tiny rabbit heart heart shaped like a mourning dove heart divided between two worlds paper-folded hearts gentle and elusive hearts pounding and black hearts-- and stones stones semi-precious shiny smooth glowing or sinking. In this book everything moves outward and accelerates with borderless butterflies the power of birds a shifting mask in the mirror ancient and modern stories of all that is important about the natural visceral and spiritual world. Vasquez Boyd puts us there. </p><p><br></p><p> -MaryFrances Wagner Poet Laureate of Missouri author of Solving for X (Spartan Press </p><p> 2022)</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>