Poetry. In SETTING THE FIRES by Darlene Pagán, fire is a literal combustion and a hunger that claims both the natural world and the human heart. Whether in the passion between lovers, the wonder of childhood, the threat of violence, or in the seeds of inspiration, fire is an element of loss and destruction necessary for renewal and cleansing.
"Oh, Darlene Pagán, where have you been all my reading life with your hard-hitting poems, your luminous words, your insights and mesmerizing cadences, your stories, your quirky visions, your lines so sharp and well- honed they glint like a knife edge as they cut through to the heart, your singular strategies with language, metaphor, with silences and syntax, your way of looking at the world? Here are poems I've been hungering to read, the poet I've been waiting to discover."—Julia Alvarez
"A lively sensibility is at work and play in SETTING THE FIRES. Irreverent and fully American, these poems are crackling with irrepressible humor and an eye for the quirky detail. I also admire their clear language and scope of subject matter, from childhood to adulthood, from the personal to the political, they leave a record of a self wide awake to the world."—Dorianne Laux