"'I'm a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies / into money, ' Petrosino writes in her fourth book, eyeing race, history, genetics and hope through the crucible of Virginia."
--The New York Times Book Review, print, "New and Noteworthy"

"This is an important and remarkable exploration of heritage."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The result of deep historical research, impressive formal dexterity, and savvy storytelling, this volume of poetry combines genealogy, history, and verse in a way that reflects many American experiences."
--Foreword Reviews

"These poems candidly tackle questions of identity, historical injustice, and suffering while suggesting the possibility of greater understanding through scientific innovation."
--Publishers Weekly, "Spring 2020 Announcements"

"Another ambitious volume from Petrosino."
--The Millions, "Must-Read Poetry: May 2020"

"Petrosino composes poems that burn and sizzle, that pierce the reader with their masterful crafting and heightened vulnerability; she breaks open and digs into bother her personal past, where she 'grew like a braid / in bad light, ' as well as American society's 'throb-in-throat' past."
--Poets & Writers, "Between Worlds: A Q&A with Poet Kiki Petrosino"

"The collection has a searching, yearning momentum that is cut by the wry intellect of a speaker who knows her pursuit of historical meaning remains subject to the same colonial forces that influenced the lives of her ancestors."
--Harvard Review

"Petrosino showcases her mastery of form."
--The Arkansas International

"White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, is deeply personal, exploring the genealogy and legacy of her African-American ancestors in Virginia. At the same time, [Petrosino] grapples with the messy history of slavery and discrimination in America, and of the sometimes difficult, often abiding choices that families of every stripe have to make. It's part of Petrosino's unique ability as a poet to capture the expansive within the intimate, the ungainly within precise poetic forms."
--"Art Talk with NEA Literature Fellow Kiki Petrosino" by Rebecca Sutton, National Endowment for the Arts

"[T]he ever-popular Kiki Petrosino excavates her roots to understand the impact of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South."
--"Versifying / Collection Development: Poetry" by Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"It would be folly to overlook Kiki Petrosino's White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia on a list of environmentally-focused books. I can't read about the landscape of Virginia and the Upper South (which Petrosino vividly describes) and not think about the blood and sweat soaked into that soil. Petrosino's exacting eye challenges reductive and redacted narratives of her native place. In this wondrously innovative collection, she renews understandings about what has grown up from that land."
--"Twelve Poetry Recommendations for Black History Month" by Camille T. Dungy, Orion Magazine

"Merg[es] fierce intelligence with sharp music."
--Rhino, Review

"Petrosino erases stereotypes and misplaced certainty with the fractured and fragmented truths of what it means to live in the wake of ancestors who suffered and afflicted, who might be imagined to be redeemed or relieved or most certainly damned."
--"Building an Archive of Earth and Water: New Poetry That Excavates the Past to Imagine a Future" by Kathryn Nuernberger, West Branch

"There is such a lovely, clean precision to Petrosino's lines."
--Rob McClennan, Periodicities

"Looking at the moment where we are in our nation's history, we're at this point of transformation -- trying to take account and responsibility for our past and to remake our country. And we look at poets like Kiki to see how all of us can do that."
-- Lisa Roberts in "Iowa City Poetry launches 'Two Voices' interview series," The Daily Iowan

"Her collection exemplifies the power of prose to reckon with our past and understand our future."
--The Denton Record-Chronicle, online

"Kiki Petrosino has been perfecting a form of weaponized valentine, a love poem armed with play and appraisal, ever since her amazing debut. Her poems charm and fillet. In White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia home is filled with history and possibility, 'that twoness one ever feels' in place and body. Both singular lyric poem and mercurial sequence featuring epistles, erasures, and sonnets, this book is wonderfully irreducible. It's further evidence of Kiki Petrosino's limitless, inimitable talent."
--Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and Lighthead

"Fueled by what it means to identify your own blood, White Blood is a masterful book of poems that excavates, resurrects, and stares clear-eyed into history. Petrosino's intricate attention to sound and the muscularity of the poetic line make these poems explode in both the ear and the heart. Here is a poet at her best."
--Ada Limón, author of The Carrying and Bright Dead Things

"In this meditation, Petrosino unlocks the history of Virginia and its racial intersections. White Blood is a magical collection, and Petrosino leads the reader through the geography of her origin with reverence. What does this body have to say of a Commonwealth never designed to include it? This voice has escaped alone to sing to us."
--T.J. Jarrett, author of Zion and Ain't No Grave