“Set during one weekend in the early 1990s, Perdomo’s fourth book celebrates a crew of hip-hop-loving friends in East Harlem with his customary heart and bravura language.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Moving between paean and elegy with incredible verve, these poems, full of affection and nostalgia, also memorialize moments of violence and loss . . . Pushing the notion of documentary poetics in addressing street violence, police brutality, and suicide, Perdomo invites the voices from his childhood to reveal themselves and their complexities in vividly rendered speech.” —Poets.org
“Within the vivid language in this poetic bildungsroman, we are given back doorway into the very real poetic imaginary of crews that carry secrets to the death. This is not poetry about a world; this is a world that lives and speaks in poetry because there is no other way to decipher it or survive it . . . All the words dance on the pages of The Crazy Bunch.” —Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta, A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine
“An energetic musicality of language is on full display, electrifying every exchange . . . If “We Real Cool,” the iconic eight-line poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, had bloomed into a full-length collection, it might be The Crazy Bunch.“ —Book Page
“New York-born Puerto Rican poet Perdomo has been widely recognized for his streetwise lyrics and crackling depictions of life in NYC at the turn of the twenty-first century. In this collection of witty dialogue, fast couplets, and hip jargon, Perdomo immerses readers in his native East Harlem of the 1990s . . . Perdomo’s colloquial, storytelling style is in full effect, replete with nostalgic recollections of childhood haunts, striking in their simplicity. The result is both a whirlwind of colorful rhythms and an enduring portrait of tight-knit friends suffering through loss. [Perdomo is] a talented wordsmith . . . quick-footed, hip, vivid, and savvy.” —Booklist
“A compelling portrait of a time and place long gone. Perdomo’s masterful eye and ear stand out: the musicality of these poems is as rich as the detailed histories of the people inside them. —Publishers Weekly
“This immersive poetry collection proceeds like a mixtape or a gnostic gospel . . . Oracular, intoxicating . . . Perdomo’s vibrant diction refashions the high lyric, drawing on local cant to render the intimacy of home, friendship, and shared loss. Part rhapsody, part elegy, the book memorializes neighborhood legends, and, even as it impishly indulges nostalgic romance, it never forgets, or forgives, the violence that threatens these young lives.” — The New Yorker
“The poems all swell with Perdomo’s natural gift of lyricism . . . a story about rap is also distinctly a story about friendship . . . [and] about loss, or about the people who didn’t make it, and the people who did. The Crazy Bunch manages to carry all of these things at once and give them equal weight.” —Hanif Abdurraqib, 4Columns.org
