"Loss and mourning likewise haunt this debut, which mixes forms (sonnets, prose poems, lyric free verse) to plumb the dawn of Covid and a father's death."--The New York Times Book Review
"Sara Daniele Rivera's poems are fractals of home, landscape and beloveds. They begin in losses and end and begin again in rhythmic half-details. English wraps to Spanish in which grief is constantly pulsing, breaking every turbulence into pattern. Rivera writes 'I want to believe death is only a pause / in our continuous language.' As readers, we accompany the poet in her search for endurance.
The Blue Mimes is a beautiful collection, pointing us to look in tender directions, and figuring a gestalt made from contemporary terrors and the plainsong of ancestors."
--Lauren Camp "This collection of 27 poems is bursting with sound and light, even as it reckons with a multitude of griefs, both personal and public."
--Sara Beth West, Shelf Awareness "Through different forms and frames, Rivera's poems traverse feelings while rearranging the wounds. . . . Rivera's code-switching, the alternating possibilities offered in the poems happen comfortably, though not necessarily in a comforting way. But the speaking endures."
--Lúcia Leão, RHINO
