SOURCE: A review of Panoramas. Publishers Weekly 244, no. 39 (22 September 1997): 77.

In the following review, Publishers Weekly applauds Cruz's use of the rhythms of Latin music in his poetry.

Celebrated for creating poetry that is a collision of the sounds, tensions and flavors of New York and Puerto Rico, Cruz [in Panoramas] achieves a musical vitality that surpasses any of his other volumes. Like a salsa band leader coaxing and challenging dancers to more and more complex steps, Cruz dares readers with dizzying polyrhythms, polymetric stanzas, back-stepping word structures and a sense of improvisation: “Humid women in plaza dance / Tongues out of mouth / At the men who jump in the shadows / Panama hats transmitting / Towards the radar / of the waist.” While the verses pulse with a cross-cultural harmony of Caribbean and Lower East Side beats, the language approximates the emotional sphere of themes in rumba lyrics: “Machetes taking off like...