When Goddesses Wake by Marisa Silva-Dunbar

Marisa Silva-Dunbar’s poetry collection “When Goddesses Wake” opens with the line “She arrived just as I was burying myself.” The she in Silva-Dunbar’s narrative is one of the goddesses of mythology whose challenges and strengths become archetypes of power and rebirth to women who awaken themselves to these muses with mystical meanings for our modern lives. Silva-Dunbar’s poetry applies efflorescent imagery and puissant mythological paragons to a world of teal bobs, rejections, Jolt Colas, cigarettes, licorice whips, loneliness and Lana Del Rey.

-Kristin Garth

author of Crow Carriage and many other books

Marisa Silva-Dunbar new poetry collection When Goddess Awake is an empowering revelation of poems that will stir you senses. Silva-Dunbar not only speaks to the Goddess, Marisa brings life by awakening them in such poems as “Xochiquetzal,” my favorite as she writes: “You are chingona, this will not crush you—It will not bury you.” Heartbreak, loss, pain, and inner darkness be damned as Marisa’s poems are a force that sends shuddering jolts of inspiration on every page. Silva-Dunbar not only stimulates the speaker and the self, but more significantly, sheinspires by enlightening the reader with these powerful poems. Marisa not only brings such goddesses like Alethia, Artio and Hathor to life, but the power of this fantastic collection is how each poem reawakens your inner Goddess by experiencing the mystical brilliance of Silva-Dunbar’s memorably inspiring verses. Let When Goddesses Wake live por vida on your bookshelf and reach for Silva-Dunbar’s book for energizing sparks as her healing poems will definitely make you feel whole and renewed.

- Adrian Ernesto Cepeda