Cumpian's (poetry) creates a persona merging barrio tough and intellectual. Like his rhythmic bilingual idiom, his representations switch classes and codes, cross borders and colonies of cultural conflict.

                    – Sheldon Silver
                        Letter eX

Carlos Cumpian is a voice out of Third-World Chicano Chicago, filled with memories of a cumulative Hispano-American past… never forgetting the pre-Columbian richness of his heritage. Cumpian is also keenly aware of geopolitical imbalances between fat-cat first world and lean-cat Third World countries, and this awareness universalizes his voice into a syncretic force of far-reaching power.

                    – Choice Magazine

Here are poems of the language leapers and syntax shakers, the bien crazy y muy cool, archangels of desire, forgotten wise and remembered foolish. Blessed are these because here is their gladiator-in-the-desert armed with magic markers and spray paint… neither hoity, ni siquiera toity, in the best tradition of the spoken word. In the beginning was la palabra, and brother, it was good.

                    – Sandra Cisneros
                        Author of The House on Mango Street