Safe Arms 20 love and erotic poems (w/an Ooh Baby Baby moan) by Peter J. Harris (June 19, 2022)
“Peter J. Harris is an exciting and welcome new voice. He’s got greatness in him. He’s got love in him. He’s got a lifetime of knowledge for what the soul needs.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The House of Broken Angels
Inspired by Neruda’s ‘20 Love Songs,’ New FlowerSong Press Book Features Spanish Translations and Cover Design by Chilean American Francisco Letelier
McAllen, Tex. – FlowerSong Press announces acquisition of Safe Arms: 20 Love & Erotic Poems (w/an Ooh Baby moan) by Peter J. Harris, with Spanish translation and cover design by Francisco Letelier, slated for 2022 publication.
The book by the winner of the 2015 American Book Award is inspired by, and modeled on, Pablo Neruda’s Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Cancion Desesperada (20 Love Poems and a Song of Despair).
For Letelier, an award-winning muralist, poet, and cultural worker, and Harris, Safe Arms continues a creative collaboration that began in performances of Harris’ Inspiration House PoetryChoir, a poetry-music ensemble, at LA’s Grand Performances summer series, and as part of Avenue 50 Studio’s “Black-Brown Dialogues.”
Harris, 2018 Los Angeles COLA Fellow in literary arts, Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC, is also the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press), winner of the 2015 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award; and The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ personal essays, winner of a 2015 American Book Award.
Letelier received a Grammy nomination for his work on musician Jackson Browne’s World in Motion release, and has also received the LA Artcore Award for contributions to Southern California culture and the SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) Siquieros Muralist
Peter J. Harris now gifts us with even more intense and incandescent poems to renew and re-energize expressions of love.
— Luis and Trini Rodriguez, co-founders of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore and The Hummingbird Cricket Hour podcast
These poems are heart quickening, cinematic, grown. Shout out to Pablo Neruda’s lushness, to E. E. Cumming’s precision, to Audre Lorde’s transfor mational eroticism. There is an amen here.
— Imani Tolliver, Black feminist and queer poet, author of Runaway A Memoir in Verse
Peter Harris is committed to the sensuality and deep well-dive of love that is irresistible passion and completeness. As readers, we are voyeurs, tongue hanging, observing tantalizing intimacy. Yes!
— Opal Palmer Adisa, co-editor, Caribbean Erotic, anthology (co-edited with Donna Aza Weir-Soley), Professor Emeritus at California College of the Arts, University Director of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies
Oh, yes. Safe Arms: 20 love & erotic poems — this bilingual book of love poems by Peter Harris has constructed word on word, mouth on mouth, boca a boca.
— Lory Bedikian, The Book of Lamenting, 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry
— William Archila, The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, 2013 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Poetry Prize
Few poets could or would be able to write this book. This is Neruda for the twenty-first century: bold, pure, and tender in its loving and wonder.
— Lee Herrick, author of Scar and Flower
Peter Harris’ Safe Arms is a bilingual chorus of sacred erotic songs sung inside a sensual temple where desire is prayer and love is god.
— Aida Salazar, author, The Moon Within, Land of the Cranes, Voices from Our Ancestors: Xicanx and Latinx Spiritual Expressions and Healing Practices
Peter J. Harris delivers a sensual gospel in the way these poems create sanctuary for you. There is a sensual rhythm here and so much beautiful nostalgia.
— Jasmine Williams, Executive Director and Host of Da Poetry Lounge
Only a poet who’s made a wild, devotional study of joy could well such deep pleasure with this much Black abandon. Here, find delight and the lit magic of “blackberry music.” Play it with your body open.
— Douglas Kearney, author of Buck Studies and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award
Love and touch transcend -- nearing the century mark since 19 year-old Pablo Neruda penned his love poems, Harris honors the Chilean bard's best-known work with twenty of his own poems of endearment and erotica that land safe in our arms at a time when love is needed more than ever.
Edward Vidaurre, author of Cry, Howl