"I am absolutely wowed by this book; each word, line, and stanza are invigoratingly precise. Martínez-Leyva is a poet who has done the painstaking work of craft, and he knows its power to deliver the reader to an often difficult, often spectacular reflection on survival. A beautiful, exacting, and triumphant collection."--Lynn Melnick

"In this deeply felt, erotically charged debut, Eduardo Martínez-Leyva leads readers through a poet's carefully built interior world in which he braids together tenderness and violence, action and passivity, the unsayable with the sung. A rewarding, memorable book from an important new voice in American poetry."--Mark Wunderlich

"A remarkable collection. These poems are a form of compulsive repetition, and what they repeat is the desire for escape, through a language capable of doing so. Poetry as sublimation, poetry as a way out."--Cynthia Cruz

"Familial and queer desires pulse with tenderness and nostalgia in Martínez-Leyva's excellent debut. Brilliantly orchestrated in three movements. . . . His subversive reclamation of Western imagery--cowboys, horses, desert landscapes--to explore queer desire and cultural displacement is particularly striking. . . . These poems reveal the fine line between desire and loss with unflinching beauty."-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"

"A standout debut."-- "Literary Hub"

"[A] lush performance of memory, masculinity, race, and the looking back all poets do, but perhaps not this expertly. . . . It is too easy to say these poems leave you breathless; rather, they hold your hand and help you steady your breathing, even as it becomes impossible to imagine you could ever breathe again like you used to."-- "Foglifter"

"Intoxicating. . . . A collection as tender as it is feverish, Cowboy Park challenges what we believe to be true about identity and pleasure. . . . This debut is sure to leave you gasping for more."-- "Only Poems"

"[An] exciting first book with cadence and verve. . . . The winner of the Felix Pollak Prize brings forth music in a book that catalogs aftermath through desire and mistranslation."-- "Poetry Northwest (Autumn 2024 Favorites)"

"These poems may not arrive at forgiveness, but they coil precisely around complex emotion, love, and anger so powerful they incandesce. This is a voice to follow into the dark."-- "RHINO Poetry"