"De la Torre's poetry deconstructs sets of beliefs about what it means to be a multi-dimensional subject and turns markers of gender and race on their so-called ears. Identity and gender politics are folded neatly into smart disses and observations on the specifics of cultural play and gaff, making this a book to be reckoned with." Lee Ann Brown

"No one I know writes like Mónica de la Torre. In her poems, we encounter odd characters who meet in David Lynch-like accidental fashion. Small bizarre incidents coalesce into a sign of our own mirrored, uncertain world. While all the while, the very camera which would explicate the internal state of the subject has no film in it. The speaker in her poem 'The Script' warns someone, 'You thought this would be / a dance lesson.' Reading these poems is decidedly not like the dance lesson where each toe and tap is programmed for a dedicated performance. Rather than relying on false certainties and pat recollections, de la Torre offers up a fine-tuned sense of the ridiculous, a world of tomfool capers with a hint of the macabre. In "The Script" she goes, within lines, from the confrontationally direct—'To pretend there's meaning when all that comes out is a "My dog loves me and he's no showboat."'—to a concise and cagey comment on language's angular trajectory from sound to meaning—'To leap from canopy to can openers to can open her.' " Mary Jo Bang

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"Reading Talk Shows, one feels the trace not so much of a writing hand as that of a verbose and erudite selector, accessing languages, etymologies, dictions, and lingos and putting her omni-language through Oulipian machines to create syntactically-charged, queer-toned texts." from Joyelle McSweeney's review at Latino Poetry Review, March 2008

"Though versatile conveniently hints at the word 'verse,' De La Torre’s poems require a more flowing term. Cornucopia, perhaps? Yes. Cornucopia. Talk Shows, De La Torre’s first book of poetry - to be written in English - is a cornucopia of experimental forms." from Doug Korb's review at Barrelhouse Magazine, August 2007

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Bomb Magazine review of Talk Shows

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Craig Santos Perez review of Talk Shows

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