How to Undress a Cop

by Sarah Cortez

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558853014
• ISBN13: 9781558853010
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.33 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Deliciously sinful

Sarah Cortez creates amazing visual images in a most unique topic, combining cops and sex in such a way you'll never view getting pulled over for a traffic violation in quite the same way again. Deliciously sinful, always sensual, the poetry takes us behind the badge and underneath the clothes of law enforcement, particularly in the seductive Latin community. Not just erotic, the writer also takes into the minds and hearts of law enforcement officers and those who love them. From the very first page until the last, I was hooked. I hope to see more from this amazing poetess.

strong work

Sarah Cortez is a poet, teacher, and cop in Houston, Texas. Her work is tough, sensual, and very sexual. Her job as a cop and her Latina heritage flavor her poems. This is a beautiful piece of work from a poet who has a lot of potential to be great. She has the flavor of those 'bad girl' poets (like Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, and their matriarch-Edna St. Vincent Millay). This is a strong collection, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Muy Caliente !

whoa...this book is soooo hot, it could scorch your fingers....not many poets can mix erotica with police work and pull it off without making it seem schlocky...in fact, i don't think i've ever read a book like this...rather than cloud her poems with ambiguities, she tell you straight up about what it's like being a cop, a woman, and a mexican american in america, sometimes, all three at the same time...she can make a poem about wearing a bulletproof vest interesting...what i love ( and i mean love ! ) about these poems,is she shows you her world without the taint of political correctness, which i think is the worst thing that has ever happened to art, because it has kept people from saying what they really mean...you see her frustrations as a cop,when she realizes she can't win every battle; the men she works with as she tries to gain their respect...her own struggles in her personal life as she loves men of brown and white shade and possible not a man at all? after reading this book. i respect her for the job she does, and for showing her sensuality unabashed on verse...

AZ Reader

This work is a lifting of the curtain into the world of cops, for without officers of the law our civility in a society that teeters on the fence of good and evil would certainly deteriorate. Poet Cortez brings the dilemmas of the police to the forefront showing poetically the stresses endured by the men and women who devote their lives for mankind. She peers deep into the psyche of cops and through her artistic genius shares their emotions with the rest of us. As you absorb the verses look beyond the written word and feel the current of these eye-opening poems. Thank you Sarah Cortez for sharing them with us.

Undress them they way you feel like undressing them

A close reading of the poems themselves shows that the poet is trying to conceal her shy and diffident personality by a kind of bravura that we might expect from a man. The result is an argument contrary to fact as well as a work of art. That said, I must admit that my respect for a work of art depends on my affection for it. In terms of form, tone, brevity, humor, sheer cleverness, beauty, wit, and efficiency, I like (there is no other word) Sarah's poems. They are easy to read and easy to understand and represent ultra modern compressed pellets of easily assimilated emotion. Any conceits? Her shadow metaphor is a conceit, but since the cops think that way, it's O.K. I know. My father was a cop. So were two of my uncles.