Institute for Latino Studies :: Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

The Institute for Latino Studies
in conjunction with the Creative Writing Program
at the University of Notre Dame
is pleased to announce that

Pity the Drowned Horses
by Sheryl Luna

is the winner of the first edition of the
Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize

Award Citation 2004:

In Pity the Drowned Horses, Sheryl Luna carves out of the El Paso landscape the music of the borderlands, where loss and acceptance converge like the jagged bodies of the U.S. and Mexico: “I long for the grimy heat, / the Rio Grande’s shallow passage, / the blue desert, and the slick legs of runners / along the smoggy highway.” Hers is “the way to truth,” but such truths can be costly: “And I am dry as an American can be.” Luna exquisitely captures—like no other poet before her—the “unsung positive capability / of the desert;” her syntax—sometimes raw and edgy—creates a tableau where everything rushes toward “our wild need—all sweat, all shiver.” The overall effect is simply mesmerizing: “Even the moon offers its solace like a lover / that will never leave.”

— Robert Vasquez, Final Judge
author of At the Rainbow

Sheryl Luna is an accomplished poet and writer whose work has appeared in literary journals, including The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Puerto delSol, Kalliope, and Notre Dame Review. She has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series book awards, as well as the Perugia Press Intro Award for women poets. Her her work is forthcoming in an anthology from University of Arizona Press. She currently teaches at the Metropolitan State College of Denver in Colorado.