"Black Hope" won the 1997 New Issues Poetry Prize
Beth, teacher at a juvenile hall facility
Dear Marsha,
I am a fan of yours. I taught at Juvenile Hall and your book, Black Hope, was one of the books I had to replace numerous times. The kids stole it. You and Jimmy Santiago Baca were the poetry I could get the girls to read!
Chase Twichell, from the foreword
“Whether her subject is mental illness, the oppression of one human being by another, or the constantly-cast shadow of our mortality, Marsha de la O’s resilient, unpretentious, sharply intelligent and unsentimental voice speaks to us of what we need to know. This is a disturbing and memorable book.”
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo43640025.html
Nancy Eimers
"Whatever it is that darkens in us every day, this is just what Marsha de la O willed into the light these gorgeous, harrowing poems. I don't know what I admire most, her merciless intelligence or her merciful spirit. I know we are luckier for having these fresh and remarkable poems before us in the world."
Deena Metzger
"A poet such as ,Marsha de la O, when confined to the dark, develops infrared vision and a language that radiates its terrible knowledge. We may be afraid but we go with her, wherever she goes, beyond anywhere we have been, because she knows what she knows.
Cynthia Huntington
"Marsha de la O's poems begin where most others leave off. She writes - with unsentimental clarity - of power and desire, the struggle of the self to remain whole and to speak its disturbing truths. This is a book of crisis, resistance, and difficult grace."