DRIVE: The First Quartet Reviewed in Library Journal

From the Current Library Journal

Cervantes, Lorna Dee. Drive: The First Quartet.
Wings Pr. 2006. 308p. ISBN 0-930324-54-4.
$24.95. POETRY

In her first collection since 1991, Cervantes presents five books bound
together that can stand alone or be read as a series. Many pieces are
political, while several others are intensely personal. Some poems are
playful; some are love or lost-love poems or small snapshots of
residents of a neighborhood not unlike Sandra Cisneros's poetic
vignettes in House on Mango Street. A seminal contributor to the
Latino movement of the 1970s, Cervantes published, in her journal
Mango, many important Latino writers including Cisneros. In one
"book," Cervantes exposes readers to wordplay, imagery she refers
to as "seven minute" poems. In another, she addresses David
Kennedy, doomed son of Robert Kennedy, who took his own sad
life in 1984, some 20 years after witnessing his father's death on
national television. Cervantes's language is accessible, her diction
plain, yet her poems are often lyrical and full of rich imagery:
"She was striving/ for a dream that was already/ broken, off the cuff,
/ in the rough, and off the key/ of Freedom." Enhancing the
musicality of her diction, she slips from English to Spanish and
back-with ease. Recommended for general collections and also those
that feature Latino, Chicano, and Native American poets.

-Karla Huston, Appleton Art Ctr., WI