A poetic collage of voices, genres, and time-spaces. A display of power over language and rhythm. A postmodern performance of naked figures hanging in the nebulae of a militarized universe. A new millennium cubist manifesto against decrepit political machines. A mystic song in search of birth and love. In this new collection of poems, Juan Felipe Herrera's natural talent for capturing the raw dimensions of reality merges with his wild imagination and technical prowess. Things, names, places, histories, herstories, desires, wills, minds, and their effects and progeny are re-mixed, re-mastered, and re-cast into a new narrative theater. Characters in a constant and stubborn rush, appearance, disappearance, and flow-- with, against, and for each other-- create the fire and give birth to the hallucinatory spotted and leaf-eating, long-necked child. Exciting and original, cutting-edge and risk-taking, "Giraffe on Fire" is a breathtaking addition to a respected body of work by a poet not afraid to speak out about how poetry reflects the raw beauty and truth of life.

Juan Felipe Herrera's recent books include Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream, Thunderweavers/Tejedoras de rayos, Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems (illustrated by Artemio Rodríguez), Crashboomlove, and The Upside-Down Boy/El niño de cabeza. He is a professor of Chicano and Latin American Studies at California State University, Fresno. He lives in Fresno with his soul partner, performance artist and poet Margarita Luna Robles.