“These are spare sequences, notational and nicked by grief, though they lash out in lyric unrest and sudden splendor. If I could lead you on a treasure hunt through The Vault, you’d find the porcelain shard, wolf skin, a set of calendar dates, the sound of silk and razor blades, and all the afters. There is something of an after feeling here, as though we were standing in the riled wake of catastrophe that lumbered past moments ago.”
―Carolina Ebeid
“Fresh off his sparkling debut, Bicycle in a Ransacked City, Andres Cerpa's sophomore collection cements his status as one of the canon's most astute conjurers of lyric and line. Threaded through with ache and hard-won revelation, The Vault sustains and energizes themes from the poet's previous work. But here merciless self-reflections sport a bladed edge--here are the intrepid musings of a man who has reckoned with grief and wrestled with the specter of longing. Muscular and melodic, these extraordinary poems establish Cerpa as a voice that's impossible to turn away from.”
―Patricia Smith
“In his brilliant second book, Andrés Cerpa moves through the labyrinth of grief. Line by line, the hurt begins to cast several shadows: the slow walk toward heartache, addiction, the death of a father. His language, like anguish, is bewildering, profound. Grief also triggers an astonishing self-awareness—a reckoning, the ‘desperate / Hopper-esque light.’ Nonlinear but unbroken, bristling with jaw-dropping imagery, The Vault is an impeccably crafted book. It moved me as a reader. It taught me a few things as a poet.”
―Eduardo C. Corral