Poetry. It's not every book of poetry that includes an Ode to Body Armor. But then, it's not every poet whose experience in academia includes a stint at the police academy. The poems of Sarah Cortez are tough-minded, verbally supple, and often deeply, even explicitly, erotic. And all the fifty poems collected here display her many facets: the street smarts and cool analytic eye of a law-enforcement officer, the unique sensibility and bilingual vocabulary of a proud Mexican American, the linguistic dexterity of a Latin teacher, and the frank sensuality of a strong and spirited woman. Surveying fellow officers, friends, criminals, lovers, strangers, and family, Cortez has learned that a bulletproof vest may -- with luck -- protect the body, but protecting the heart from harm is a more mysterious affair. HOW TO UNDRESS A COP is her debut collection and winner of the PEN Texas Literary Award for Poetry.

How to Undress a Cop

Literature & Fiction

Cortez, Sarah

Poetry

Arte Publico Press

Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials

Along Texas roadways rest thousands of contemplative shrines, usually marked by small, white metal crosses. Anchored by the stunning photography of roadside memorials by Dan Streck, this landmark book allows four poets to respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity and eloquent ekphrasis: Larry D. Thomas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons brings her award-winning skills to perfectly meld photography with poetry in this gorgeous volume. A Plain, White Cross It lists slightly beside the highway. Whoever placed it there drove its upright deep into the earth, intimate with the tragedy of wind and driving rain. Knowing the certainty of erasure, they left it nameless, just a simple wooden cross harboring, for a while, the traces of unbearable loss. As if lit from within with white light, it glows beside the silent highway: white light stark as the grief of the bereaved, white as the clouds above, streaking, disintegrating. Larry D. Thomas

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Texas Review Press

The poems of Sarah Cortez flex lean muscles to build lyric intensity and a gripping edginess often backlit by an incandescent, controlled eroticism. Cortez reveals the hidden underworld of her fellow police officers, whose lives comprise the thin blue line and whose blood sometimes splashes and blackens on summer concrete. Aquarium And what of the water? A transparency we swim through, lithe white muscle, the glide of fins. We move and move forever inside reflections, refractions, ruckus from the other side. Our eyes never close. We see you coming. We don’t think we’re dinner.

Against Sky's Warm Belly: New & Selected Poems

Trp: The University Press Of Shsu

Over twenty years ago, Sarah Cortez left a flourishing corporate career to strap on a gun, and police the streets. Transitioning from designer heels and a high-rise office to a low-bid, agency-owned Crown Vic wasn’t easy, but it delivered exactly what she desired. In these highly-charged personal reflections, Cortez reveals the complicated machinery of a cop’s heart, mind, and soul by dissecting the differences between cops and civilians. A must-read to understand the intangibles demanded by policing—courage, determination, patience, and a belief in justice—despite the grimy backdrop where life can become death in an instant.

Tired, Hungry, and Standing in One Place for Twelve Hours: Essential Cop Essays: Essential Cop Essays

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Along Texas roadways rest thousands of contemplative shrines, usually marked by small, white metal crosses. Anchored by the stunning photography of roadside memorials by Dan Streck, this landmark book allows four poets to respond to the visual summons of roadside memorials with lyric intensity and eloquent ekphrasis: Larry D. Thomas, Jack B. Bedell, Sarah Cortez, and Loueva Smith. Graphic designer Nancy J. Parsons brings her award-winning skills to perfectly meld photography with poetry in this gorgeous volume.  A Plain, White Cross   It lists slightly beside the highway. Whoever placed it there drove its upright  deep into the earth,  intimate with the tragedy of wind and driving rain. Knowing the certainty  of erasure, they left it nameless, just a simple wooden cross harboring,  for a while, the traces  of unbearable loss. As if lit from within with white light, it glows beside the silent highway:  white light stark as the grief of the bereaved,  white as the clouds above,  streaking, disintegrating.  Larry D. Thomas

This ground-breaking, mixed genre memoir journeys from the soil of Texas farmland near Floresville to the shrimpers’ nets of the Gulf Coast, near Matagorda. Three generations of Hispanic families are viewed through the faith-filled lens of the miraculous and the poignancy of dreams never realized. The journey continues to mid-twentieth century Houston, where what is done is as powerful as that which never happened.

Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston

Community & Culture

Cold Blue Steel contains fifty lyric poems set in the world of the urban street cop in Houston, the nation’s fourth largest metropolis.
In the patrol car, at scenes of suicides and DOAs, in the overtime reality of aching feet and sweating torsos, the reader experiences the hard realities and unexpected luminosities of doing America’s most dangerous job.

Cold Blue Steel: Poems (Volume 11) (21st Century Poets)

United States

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cortez, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Cortez, Sarah

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Cortez, Sarah. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How to Undress a Cop

Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials

Against Sky's Warm Belly: New & Selected Poems

Tired, Hungry, and Standing in One Place for Twelve Hours: Essential Cop Essays: Essential Cop Essays

Vanishing Points: Poems and Photographs of Texas Roadside Memorials

Walking Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston

Cold Blue Steel: Poems (Volume 11) (21st Century Poets)