"Part satirist, part ecopoet, part elegist, but every bit a luminous poet, Ariel Francisco brilliantly voices the complex intersections of the physical, emotional, and natural landscapes that define our sense of place and belonging, as well as our feelings of alienation and ennui."
-RICHARD BLANCO Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of How to Love a Country
"Ariel Francisco's All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins delivers a vision of the Anthropocene that is by turns bleak, mordant, and whimsical. In this too familiar world, media services stream AI-generated whale cries, franchised mega-resorts overtake local beaches, light pollution puts out the stars, and laptops litter the ocean 'like dead clams / stunned mouths hinged open / in unheard prayers.' At the book's center is the expansive 'Insomniami, ' an anti-nocturne comprised of sixty trenchant sections set against a vast blankness mimetic of the cold density of the deep and the hard vacuum of space Francisco imagines. Those who prefer meek tranquility, lyric plaintiveness, and lovely nightscapes should read lesser poetry."
-CAROLYN HEMBREE author of For Today
"Ariel Francisco's most compelling poems push the boundaries of language, igniting wonder and introspection, a hallmark shared with the works of Marianne Moore and Larry Levis, who have a keen eye for the particular. Francisco reveals a world fractured by natural disasters and urban sprawl, where our alienation from nature and each other is painfully obvious. All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins establishes Francisco as a great maker of our time."
-RUBEN QUESADA author of Brutal Companion, the 2023 Barrow Street Poetry Prize Editors' Choice
