“To read [Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy] is to step into Cerpa’s mind — to enter a ransacked world, bleak yet beautiful."
—The Harvard Crimson

“This brilliant book tells a hell-forged truth with angelic music, making devastating beauty from the elemental and agonized relation between father and son—at once a war and a loss and a tether, a home. Through the cruel truth there is love; even in the deepest pit there’s light. This nocturnal-hearted poet’s not likely looking for it but there it is, still falling all over his burning, metallic, ruinous discoveries. There it is: love and brutality mixed together in epic scenes. No judgment, no transcendence—no way out of the mire. Cerpa’s is a magnificent talent—a yawp made for this very moment, and a voice for the ages.”
—Brenda Shaughnessy

“The poetry of Andrés Cerpa gives startling dimension to the most profound experiences of human sadness; his words come from the ache of longing for what has been taken away or denied by loss and love. A remarkable and poignant debut that illuminates the dark rooms we all inhabit in our search for solace, beauty, or saving grace.”
—Rigoberto González