Publisher's Synopsis
Poetry. Chicano Studies. Edited by Christopher Buckley and Jon Vineberb. This was in the 1960s, and he was giving me work enormously original, powerful...but the vision itself, Latino surrealism, gave an unusual edge to his work. His experience gave his poetry magnified authority.... This man had a gift.--Philip Levine
Vallejo, Hernandez, Don Quixote: they are the kin of Luis Omar Salinas, a kinship of spirit rather than imitation. As a Chicano raised in a Texas border town, he has always known that concentrated sense of life that gets exposed at the margins of things--a field, a town, a living to make or lose. There is much sadness and joy in Omar's poems, often intermixed, but mostly there is an abiding compassion for those so exposed to the world that they have only their own nakedness to offer it. And perhaps this is more than kinship, it is community.--Peter Everwine
From the earliest beginnings of Chicano Literature encounters, every occasion where Chicano writers have gathered, be it poetry readings, Cantos, Festivales, etc...no one has ever disputed the fact that Luis Omar Salinas es el mero Chingon de la poesia chicana. This has been not only the opinion of his fellow poets but that of critics as well.--Jose Montoya
I cannot think of another poet, Latino or otherwise, as daring with love poetry, as fierce in his honesty, as nimble with line, image, and mood.--Juan Felipe Herrera
