Rio Cortez

“Outstanding . . . the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.”
—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger

“Golden Ax is a mirror maze where every poem elongates or widens the reader . . . I've never read anything like it. Truly a sublime experience.”
—Jason Reynolds, author of Ain't Burned All the Bright

“I love this book—for its sensuous, chiseled language; for all the trees and plants; for its weird and brainy sense of humor; for its palpable yearning and need; and for its entangled, complicated, unfixable, and unfixing blackness . . . I am so grateful for this book, and this voice, and this heart, in the world.”
—Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights  

“A game changer. [Cortez is] without a doubt one of the most brilliant writers I've ever read . . . This book will be talked about for decades—it's canon. [Cortez is] a genius. . . Golden Ax is a seismic achievement . . . a cosmic-level work of art.”
—Brenda Shaughnessy, author of The Octopus Museum 

“Brimming with lyricism and imagination, sensitivity and sly humor; Golden Ax is a perfectly innovative and relentlessly tender collection by a thrillingly dynamic poet.”
—Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

“Insistent with cataloging our fullest existence: Black life, Black leisure, Black peace, and Black joy, Golden Ax is an integral study and acknowledgment of a historically scattered, generationally wounded people. . . This collection is the grace we don’t deserve, but will love wholly as we earn the weight of its bounty.”
—Mahogany L. Browne, author of Vinyl Moon