Safe Arms

"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

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 Lourde'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