Edward Vidaurre's EL VIEJO takes the reader on a resigned journey into life, much like a determined man walking to the gallows but with a much much different gasp at the end. 
 
—Juan Ochoa is the author of the novel Mariguano and its prequel Pa'l Otro Lado and Other Tales of Bad Hombres and Nasty Women
 
 
This collection by Edward Vidaurre, EL VIEJO, is an intimate work of wonder. Edward takes the time to “write about everything, catastrophes and small sadnesses/” He weaves you through his memories, all the legends, all the tenderness in the abundance of a life lived. To open up each page is to sit with his voice, his musings, his heartbreaks, his loves, his insides. He does not hide a thing in this collection. He has “written many poems about this solace and hurt.” You cannot look away from this masterful voice; instead, take each line, like a breath, let it fill you up. This is a collection that will leave you full. 
            
—Lupe Mendez, Texas Poet Laureate Emeritus (2022 – 2023)
 
 
EL VIEJO by Edward Vidaurre gives the ‘coming of age’ genre a new turn through a suite of American poems about the battle of desire against time.  We read of baseball, radios, cars, knives, and cops pulling over young men with guns under the dashboard and lifelong dreams of bullets whizzing by. EL VIEJO aches with a nostalgia for sweet sorrows of yesteryears, such as the first kiss of deep desire—and feels the lingering emptiness of a boyhood mitt that missed a legendary stray ball that flew by into the stands. Whether the poet harps on a detail of loss accepted or tries to rekindle the ol’ time feeling by singing along to his mother’s favorite love song on vinyl—Vidaurre offers us a big-hearted take on the pains of aging. It’s not bitterness that endures in these poems but a palpable desire for what’s ahead. 
 
It’s been over 30 years, I haven’t been to a baseball game
in over 10 years or so. Now I just relish in the homeruns
caught on television out there on left field especially
where I celebrate the foul balls and any ball hit into a crowd
 
—Tess O’Dwyer, co-edited Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas (Routledge) and Poets, Philosophers, Lovers: On the Writings of Giannina Braschi (Pittsburgh)
 
 
 
 
Edward Vidaurre is an award-winning poet and author of nine collections of poetry. He is the 2018-2019 City of McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate, 2022 inductee to the Texas Institute of Letters, and publisher of FlowerSong Press. His writings have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Texas Observer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other journals and anthologies. Vidaurre resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife Liliana, and daughter Luisa Isabella.