To write poetry, Carlos Hernández Peña gives up his native Spanish and uses English—his 'alien language.' This otherness of his English allows him to write, as he says, 'from another side of the world,' aquellos ojos verdes, where tarantualas are amicable drunks and bottles are bruised. His wild new language keeps him awake 'through a white night' and wakens us to surprising lands where he asks whales to 'name this living' and icicles to breathe on our shoulders... We recognize his other world in our own mouths, and taste it new as 'sparks of snow.'

—Lois Marie Harrod, author of Put Your Sorry Side Out