“This is a rare, evocative, and haunting book. For its sparse song of indwelling in landscapes of austerity; for its understanding of description as a function subordinate to wakefulness of mind, for its process of perception that splits the difference between animal and oblivion, habit and habitat, doubt and debt—I found myself returning again and again to its atmospheric method of knowing; to its structure of restraint and elegance.”
—Roberto Tejada, 2020 series judge and author of Still Nowhere in an Empty Vastness
“Migratory Sound offers a new generation the rarity (in the company of Celan, Juarroz, and Valentine) of a poetry voiced in full presence, low volume. Over and over, Olivares gives form to trusting that intelligence is inseparable from sensoralities. There’s a fearlessness here, humility before the mysteries, and great love.”
—Kathleen Peirce, author of Vault
“If a figure is anything with a physical presence, Sara Lupita Olivares’s poems are a kind of figure study with an audio dimension: what do we see in our seeing, what do we hear (and what do we miss) in our listening? These are poems that undraw the outlines of shape and sound to perceive their astonishing essences.”
—Nancy Eimers, author of Oz