Some of the Light: New and Selected Poems

25 years of writing from one of our most gifted Latinx poets, taking the reader from his early exploration of machismo to new work on life as a single father, immigrant detention, and spiritual inquiry.

Some of the Light: New & Selected gathers the first 25 years of Hernandez’s award-winning poetry, offering a glimpse at the trajectory of a rising contemplative American author.

At its core, Some of the Light contains collected poems of love, told through the lens of a single father raising two children alone in the borderlands. They are at times intimate and confessional, telescoping from personal relationships to spiritual inquiry, from human rights to the environment, while between the cracks of the poems are poetic contemplations, chronicling the passing days of the pandemic. This latest work by Hernandez reveals a writer who former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera calls A titan-unafraid to take to the road, get his hands dirty, to fully immerse himself in the world of his subjects.

Some of the Light is a part of Beacon Press’s Raised Voices Poetry Series, established in 2021 to raise historically excluded voices and perspectives, and to celebrate poetry’s ability to access truths in ways no other form can.