A rare, fully realized first book that boldly summons and carefully distills the boundless possibilities of poetry, daring us to live, mourn, and play at the limits of everyday language. The music of Alvarez's muse is something to behold, whether scoring the aerodynamics of jazz or finding counterrhythms in the sonnet's pentameter. This is an unforgettable debut, a song of afterlives in the here and now, a libation for all those "forced to dance in scarcity."
Makeshift Altar is required reading—rich, tender, and eloquent. Alvarez explores culture, heritage, family, and belonging. By the end of this collection, I felt like I was part of the mountains "skirting the continent of what is." Once I picked this book up, I could not put it down. It is the birthing ground for fresh images and answers to the difficult questions. Alvarez has made a way for us where there was none. Her words will not cuddle. Instead, they gently push and make one reach for higher ground. She invites us to come "let our survivor's bones grow fat with sweet."
The speaker has not lost sight of her roots, which are alive in her in ways that are both beautiful and haunting.... Bold and tender in their consideration of the author's identity as a Black woman of Puerto Rican and Jamaican descent, Alvarez's poems also grapple with dominant colonial narratives and internalized racism. Throughout the collection the speaker reclaims her own narrative and the right to tell her story: "I want to only say yes to myself / for a little while."
Written with musicality, song, and carefully tuned rhythm, [Alvarez] attempts to show the connections between the past and present and trace her ancestry as a Black Latina. Throughout the book, she also touches on important themes including environment, family, migration, colonialism, displacement, and who we become when we are when shaped by our choices and larger powers.
Winner of the 2025 CARICON Prize for Poetry
These poems stand up straight and sing their love loud then bow their heads low to lament and mourn and remember Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Jennifer Laude. From Monongahela Means Falling to Fly to the perfectly executed Sometimes, Alvarez offers up a masterclass on form and function. This poet and these poems are just what America needs right now!
Makeshift Altar depicts what's lost in miscommunication or, worse yet, when no one utters a sound, telling us what we can learn from hallowed or broken bodies, soil and ocean, mothers and daughters, animals and men. Alvarez has reverence—for house, home and most things considered unholy, outcast, and ordinary. The past haunts us relentlessly, and she leans into that haunting in this work, reminding us '[a]ny version of home must begin/from the outside in.
There are the physical homes we inhabit—tenements, sweltering countries, 3rd—floor walkups, buzzing boroughs—and the homes we carry in our chests, against our hearts. With a sanguine lyrical tenacity and the witnessing glare of a true griot, Amy Alvarez celebrates and mourns the places that have named her, while insisting that Any version of home must begin.. in all the Englishes I have inherited, my colonized tongue perched in the eaves of my mouth. This deftly—crafted debut, well worth the long, long wait, is all poetry claims to be—a new path to and through the familiar.
Makeshift Altar is required reading—rich, tender, and eloquent. Alvarez explores culture, heritage, family, and belonging. By the end of this collection, I felt like I was part of the mountains "skirting the continent of what is." Once I picked this book up, I could not put it down. It is the birthing ground for fresh images and answers to the difficult questions. Alvarez has made a way for us where there was none. Her words will not cuddle. Instead, they gently push and make one reach for higher ground. She invites us to come "let our survivor's bones grow fat with sweet."
Makeshift Altar depicts what's lost in miscommunication or, worse yet, when no one utters a sound, telling us what we can learn from hallowed or broken bodies, soil and ocean, mothers and daughters, animals and men. Alvarez has reverence—for house, home and most things considered unholy, outcast, and ordinary. The past haunts us relentlessly, and she leans into that haunting in this work, reminding us '[a]ny version of home must begin/from the outside in.
Makeshift Altar depicts what's lost in miscommunication or, worse yet, when no one utters a sound, telling us what we can learn from hallowed or broken bodies, soil and ocean, mothers and daughters, animals and men. Alvarez has reverence—for house, home and most things considered unholy, outcast, and ordinary. The past haunts us relentlessly, and she leans into that haunting in this work, reminding us '[a]ny version of home must begin/from the outside in.
