When Poems Fly: Adventures in Songwriting and Bird Forgiveness

Melinda Palacio

I wrote a song. Not only did I write a song, but I came up with the chords and lyrics all on my new guitar, something that impressed me and my friends. My husband, Steve, was the only person who was not surprised by my sudden interest in all things musical. He's the one who took me guitar shopping for my birthday last November and he's the one who kept saying, 'you're a poet, you should write songs'. Every time he'd mention the songwriting idea, I simply chuckled to myself. Thinking, I can't even sing, let alone write a song.

When we went guitar shopping, I noticed there were several people who like to hang out at guitar shops and show off their skills. Then there was me; I'd pick up a guitar and play the handful of open chords I knew very well. At Jensen's in Santa Barbara, the small shop is very laidback and the owner, Chris Jensen, showed me all of their inexpensive guitars before busting out the big guns. Even before hearing the Martin Road Series, I knew it would be a guitar I would be super happy with. The beautiful rose wood had a dark red body. It was love at first strum. The guitar sounded just as rich as it deep mahogany color, like a fine wine and chocolate all rolled up in one perfected instrument. Last March, I wrote my first song on that guitar.  

Poem: What the Birds Know by Melinda Palacio

You're probably wondering just how did that magical moment happen. I had been putting the final touches on my latest poetry manuscript, Bird Forgiveness. It was a Saturday when I walked down to the Santa Barbara Roasting Company. That coffee shop always has a long wait. You could do an errand while you wait for them to pour your coffee into a paper cup, but Steve likes it. While I was reading Casa Magazine, the first lines of the chorus floated before me. I took out my pen and wrote the lines on the magazine. I had no doubt that I was writing a song, partly because I heard the melody in my head. The words were familiar to me because they were based on my poem, 'What the Birds Know' from my new book. Because the poem is now associated with the Bird Forgiveness book, the line I kept hearing was, 'because forgiveness begins with a bird, flying high, flying high, waiting for a lonely hand to say goodbye, say goodbye, say goodbye'.

Bird Forgiveness, the song by Melinda Palacio

I had a chorus and two versus. Now, what? Steve advised me to grab my guitar and work out the chords, something that sounded like a very tall order, but ended up working out like a charm. I chose the key of D because I was learning a Bob Dylan song in the key of D, 'Don't Think Twice'. Because I heard the song in my head and had chosen an easy key with all open chords, when I finished the song, I recorded it and wrote everything down to make sure I wouldn't forget it. Two months later, I recorded myself playing my song on my new guitar. It's a great feeling to see one of my poems turned into a song. I look forward to writing more songs. I know I will be able to write more songs because I had the same anxious feeling about writing my first poem. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to write another poem. Three books later, I can assure anyone who wants to write or learn guitar that secret is daily practice.

Special thanks to Susan and Dennis Chiavelli for hosting the location of these videos and for their hospitality. Although I'm noticing several hiccups and mistakes in both the video of the poem and the song, I'm leaving them here for viewers. How many poetry books have their own theme song?

Bird Forgiveness, new title from 3: a Taos Press

Praise for Bird Forgiveness

As a lover of birds, I am a lover of Bird Forgiveness.  As a lover of poetry, I love these poems because though beaked and winged, in pain and in joy, they also take flight out of their occasion. With a focus on birds, the world is renewed, and the poet reminds us it is we who need forgiving. Melinda Palacio's birds touch us everywhere they fly: from the drowning of a homeless woman in Audubon Park to the oil spill damage to a duck. Like the birds she loves and mourns, Melinda Palacio migrates her songs between two coasts, Gulf and West, Latino and Anglo—and she asks for the poetic freedom birds have. Sometimes the poems appear as near sonnets, sometimes in utterly free shapes, but always this is a book of fierce mourning for the birds that fall at our feet and for a grandmother who dies under her watchful care while caged birds quarrel. In the end Melinda Palacio sets all her birds free, and we remember what birds and poets have most in common—their wild song. 

—Rodger Kamenetz, To Die Next To You

How wonderful to think that Melinda Palacio is writing poems so delightfully human, so unexpected in their movements  from wit to profundity, so uncompromisingly honest. Who else would recognize a bluebird as Elvis? Who else ask birds for forgiveness? Her finest book yet, Bird Forgiveness is a work of great modesty, invention, and abiding respect for all the living world.

—Rodney Jones, Village Prodigies

Bird Forgiveness is a deeply nourishing and exquisite book about living. Melinda Palacio

masterfully explores confinement, liberation, freedom, and flight. Abundant joy and wonder run through the poems—from the harpy eagle, to a bluebird named Elvis, to instructions on how to wash a duck—and they examine human behavior and relationships with wisdom and grace. This is a delightful, unforgettable book from a marvelous talent at the top her game.

—Lee Herrick, Scar and Flower

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Happy Saturday. If you are reading this today, May 19, come to the La Bloga panel at the Pasadena Lit Fest at 5:30 pm at the Andalucia, 686 E. Union St. Bring any comments or questions. 

Great Instauration in Highland Parque. Floricanto for Fukushima.

Michael Sedano

Ave 61 and Figueroa, Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Culture

Twenty years ago, Andy Ledesma started painting a mural on a beautiful wall belonging to a local furniture company in his northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park on the corner of Avenue 61 and Figueroa.

Ledesma's friend and fellow artist, Eagle--Anthony Ortega--joined him. They painted a mural and cemented a community.

As the artists worked on the busy corner, kids began stopping by. Ledesma and Eagle made friends and kids willingly joined in. Given a grid square, a brush and some paint, the community team created Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Culture.

Something there is that loves a community wall, so the mural withstood taggers, changes of building owners, and ignorant Chamber of Commerce tipos who had already painted out a nearby Frank Romero mural ("I didn't know," said the necktied vandal with the can of white paint.)

This year, joined by artist Joe Bravo, Ledesma and Ortega, with assistance from the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, once again enlisted community members and restored Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Culture. The mural was re-dedicated in a blessing ceremony and community celebration on March 19, 2016.

Xipe Totec Danzantes Azteca, a highly accomplished troupe, conducted the mural blessing ceremony with concha fanfares, copal, and dance.

Andy Ledesma reflects on his 20 year legacy, ready for another twenty.

Danzantes Xipe Totec

Synchronized movement, incredibly detailed costumes representing hundreds of hours needle work enchanted the audience. The danzantes' intense drum beats accompanied with the snapping rhythm of Chachayote anklets, echoed the Mexica-themed mural's cultural themes of an prehispanic land fittingly celebrated by its modern-day descendants. Wafting incense infiltrated the senses, awakening cultural memories that multiplied the significance of the symbolic painting. 

The Speakers

Connectedness, along with renewal, was the theme of the handful of speakers and poets.

Andy Ledesma

Mural originator Andy Ledesma pulled up stakes in LA to settle in Texas. But for the recent months Ledesma resided in his Highland Park hometown to repaint the mural. His joy at the recovery of his art was manifest as he emceed the event, remarking how the triumphant return of the beautifully restored artwork was almost enough to draw him back to Califas on a longer-term basis.

Rather than term the project a mere "restoration," the new color and protective finish must be termed a complete renewal, at once a return to its original condition, yet more perfect than before. Hence, an instauration.

Eagle, Anthony Ortega

Anthony Ortega, whom many knew in his youth as Eagle, explained the process of restoration and how once again neighborhood youth were drawn to the project to help clean and paint.

Joe Bravo

Joe Bravo, the innovative painter who popularized painting on tortillas, told the gathering how he'd been restoring near-by murals and when he learned of this project started bringing his ladders and brushes to lend his expertise to the project. He had recently finished the Virgin's face.

Bravo displayed his Bernie Sanders poster that puns on the candidate's name with Sanders thrusting a flaming finger to the top of the frame.

The speakers at the dedication acknowledge the importance of arte and murals in helping form a community. The parking lot site exemplified the spirit as a barber college allowed the event to take over its parking lot on a busy Saturday afternoon, prime time.

President of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, Eric Bjorgum

Los Angeles is beginning to claim status as the mural capital of the world, owing not only to the hundreds of walls bearing Chicana Chicano as well as other liberationist ethnic murals, but also through efforts of Eric Bjorgum's organization, the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles.

Mobilizing the political savvy and fundraising prowess of attorneys and art historians, particularly Isabel Rojas-Williams (see this La Bloga column) the Conservancy led the effort to convince the Los Angeles City Council to abandon its mindless laws prohibiting murals.

Historian Charlie Fisher

Charlie Fisher, an historian and leader of the Highland Park Heritage Trust, shared the history of the building hosting this mural, and efforts of communitarians like him to interrupt developer plans to raze the architecturally distinctive buildings in the northeast. Despite their work, hipsters and gentrification have begun changing the character and tenor of the area. The mural represents an important element in preservation and counter-statement. Y no nos vamos.

Fisher explained how the muralists had done it with good smarts. They signed a contract with the original building owner, who so strongly supported his community and the mural that he installed lighting to illuminate the work through the night. Thus, although the building changed hands multiple times, the mural held its wall. It was in the contract.

Manny Lopez

Radio broadcaster Manny Lopez was one of the people who pitched in at the early part of the Chicano literary movimiento. Manny used to go to meetings with his brother Rafas, a founder of Con Safos Magazine. C/S is an avatar of raza writing, thought, and arte that was the first publisher of poet raúlrsalinas when he was still in the joint, and featured a wildly popular cartoon series, Porfi and Arnie, by Sergio Hernandez.

Lopez, now headquartered in Barstow, DJs and manages AM1230 and FM channels 94.3, 95.9, and 102.5. Lopez and his stations provide the soundtrack for drivers between LA and Las Vegas, including Art Laboe. If the Wolfman were still around, Manny probably would arrange that, too.

The Poets

Dennis Cruz

Dennis Cruz, a powerfully ironic poet, shared an extended set featuring barrio- and vato-themed work. He writes, according to one interview, because he has no choice. He also writes because he wants to connect with people like himself. Unlike probably any other Chicano poet, Cruz was kissed by Gregory Corso.

The Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, Luis J. Rodriguez arrived after a bit of a delay. There was an event on Figueroa Street and traffic was a jumbled mess in the area. Rodriguez arrived along with his friend John Densmore. Rodriguez read from his sonnet project, telling the audience he enjoys the formalism of the Shakespearean sonnet.

Densmore read a poem by his former musical partner, Jim Morrison. Densmore and Morrison were members of The Doors.

Luis J. Rodriguez

After Densmore's reading, he and Rodriguez conferred and choose a poem that Rodriguez read to Densmore's drum accompaniment. The reading with rhythm was a highlight of the day and a tough act to follow.

John Densmore, Luis J. Rodriguez

Densmore and Rodriguez confer on a co-performance

It fell upon Zero, an accomplished spoken word artist, to wrap up the day's literary work. An indigenist themed writer, Zero shared work from his mixtape CD, Tonal y Nahuatl.

Zero took over the stage with confidence and power. His fluid presentation and powerful presence offered a wondrous mirror of cultural confluence, growth and cultural sequence. It is the capstone of a day celebrating a mural named Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Culture. The day began with prehispanic music and dance, progressed to movimiento poetry, Chicano sonnets, and concluding with twenty-first century spoken word.

QED: sequence of time and culture.

Zero (el Vuh). Click here to listen to selections by Zero.

View Mexico-Tenochtitlan: A Sequence of Time and Cultureat at the corner of Avenue 61 and Figueroa Street.

Be sure to have a meal (tasty ceviche, red menudo on Saturday and Sunday) at La Estrella, itself a wonderfully muralled structure, across the street from the mural.

La Bloga On-line Floricanto for Fukushima
Sonia Gutiérrez, Iris De Anda, Sharon Elliott, Meg Withers, Alfonso Martínez Pretel, Xánath Caraza, Frank Acosta, Teresa Mei Chuc, Silvia Santos, Kai Coggin

Through efforts led by Odilia Galván Rodríguez and the Moderators of the Facebook poetry community, Poets Responding to SB 1070: Poetry of Rebellion, La Bloga proudly yet sorrowfully shares a fourth On-line Floricanto remembering the gente of Fukushima, Japan and victims of TEPCO's incompetence in the face of natural disaster. Click here for the first in 2011, and second in 2014, and third in 2015 La Bloga On-line Floricanto for the people of Fukushima. Click here for a review of Cecile Pineda's Devil's Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima Step by Step.

When life gives you Fukushima and other nuclear disasters, read and write poetry. It's better than screaming.

The Colors of Death By Sonia Gutiérrez
Querida Pachamama By Iris De Anda
Remembering Fukushima, Nagasaki and Hiroshima By Sharon Elliott
Now I know why they offered to work at Fukushima By Meg Withers
Tankas to Mother Earth By Alfonso Martínez Pretel
Abismo Por Xánath Caraza
Mother Earth is Crying By Frank Acosta
Love After Fukushima By Teresa Mei Chuc
Fukushima. Por Silvia Santos
Washed-Up Dinosaurs By Kai Coggin



The Colors of Death
By Sonia Gutiérrez

Ask Fukushima
if she drank
clean water this morning.
If she closes her eyes,
she was too embarrassed
to confess
radioactive water seeped
into groundwater
and seaweed water
all year long.

Ask Fukushima
if those tumors,
oozing blood
were removed
from the gaping mouths
of fish and if their eyes
saw their own fins
disintegrate.
Ask Fukushima
if she smelled
the bloated bellies
of salmon
along the warm
ocean shores.

With dry eyes
and chapped lips,
she will answer,
“The hands that protected us
from the power plant’s
demise all year long
did not come this morning
and will not
come tomorrow.”

Ask Fukushima,
“What is the color of death?”
She will answer,
“Death is the color of Chernobyl . . . Cadarache,
and of our abandonment
in broad daylight.”





Querida Pachamama
By Iris De Anda

Querida Pachamama,

This is it. Road is coming to an end. Let us go out like fire flies. Luminous road, volcanic ash, this walk we are taking together. Remember, mountain ranges and desert sky nestled in my eyes. A sigh of deep relief knowing you will be here long after I leave. A perfect geometric spiral of us laid across your Maiz crops. Seeds of wonder planted by ancestors. Prickly cactus embraces change. We roam together querida from sunrise to sunset. Morning dew full of esperanzas. Hummingbird stillness spreads in afternoon quiet. Shh. Listen to your hum. Om. Namaste. As above so below dear earth mother. Ignite us with movement so that we may save your last rainforest. There is no room for extinction and if there is let it be those who poison your path. Let us undo the clash and find peace in the becoming. Yo soy tu Rainbow Warrior & I will die trying to save you.

De todo Corazon,
Tu hija rebelde





Remembering Fukushima, Nagasaki and Hiroshima
By Sharon Elliott

“Human memory has a tendency to slip, and critical judgment to fade, with the years and with changes in life-style and circumstance.”
 ~ Yosuke Yamahata, who photographed Nagasaki a day after the atomic bomb was dropped

serene brutality of the sea
conjured
by mad dogs
and bent men
throwing juju at the cold moon
folly of arrogance
speaks
with chaotic urgency

a storm created in her name
by misuse and ignorance
casts towering waves on the sand
ravenous
at the edges of perception
radioactive

mothers
gather young ones
with seaweed hair
in arms too weak to hold them
sing their own hearts
into vapor
aching moans scratch
at brains attempting
to make sense
of broken morning

fingernails crack
torn away from the beds
weary from holding on
small watchers
befriend snakes
poisonous frogs
too feeble to move

may this fate never
come to them again
three times is
three too many
moratorium
must be enforced
by those responsible
those who know
and do nothing
those who cast a blind eye
this very moment
arguing economics

the door is open
can’t be closed
or locked
rusting hinges
can only be partially cleaned
so they don’t squeak
quite so much




Now I Know Why They Offered to Work at Fukushima*
By Meg Withers

"The work's not hard, if you don't think about the radiation."
- Minoru Ikeda, 63, retired postal worker who joined the cleanup effort at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in 2013.

I have tried to
write stained
water flowing into
the world
about sea otters
anemones and perch, and
their silent graceful sluice
from one underwater to another.
I cannot contend
with bleakness
when news focuses
a harsh lens on a beach
strewn with blue fin whales:
our relatives
our precursors
whole families of fishes.
I have tried and there
are no words
this plight we have
descended
upon ourselves.
An absence of dolphins
in their sleek pods
gill, fin, sentience
gracious source
the death of us all.

*The title comes from the deaths of Japanese workers and other citizens at Fukushima, who chose to go back into the deadly environment to help assuage the guilt over having sent such a deadly, irrevocable force into the world’s largest and most precious natural resource.





Tankas To Mother Earth
By Alfonso Martínez Pretel

Mother Earth, your soul,
deep inside the blue planet,
suffers for so long
because her human creatures
forget the most primal love.

They call it progress,
but you know that sometimes greed
becomes pollution
for your air, land and rivers
for your watery sea dress.

Why this harassment
to the origins of all?
if a pure nature
must be the prolific womb
for the new generations.

Why this egoism
make you breathe the harmful smoke
for your hair of clouds?
You have got to pour grey tears
along your own fertile feet.

But you forgive them
with the look of a sunrise,
the voice of a brook
and the caress of seasons.
Oh, Mother, you must be God.


Madre Tierra, tu alma,
profundamente dentro del planeta azul,
sufre durante mucho tiempo
porque sus criaturas humanas
olvidan el amor más primigenio.

Lo llaman progreso,
pero sabes que algunas veces la codicia
se convierte en contaminación
para tu aire, tierra y ríos,
para tu acuoso vestido marino.

¿Por qué este hostigamiento
a los orígenes de todo?,
si la naturaleza pura
debe ser la prolífica matriz
para las nuevas generaciones.

¿Por qué este egoísmo
te hace respirar el humo nocivo
para tu pelo de nubes?
Tienes que verter lágrimas grises
a lo largo de tus propios pies fértiles.

Pero los perdonas
con la mirada de un amanecer,
la voz de un arroyo
y la caricia de las estaciones.
Oh, Madre, tú debes ser Dios.




Abismo
Por Xánath Caraza

Acuático envenenamiento
en densas aguas
profundas corrientes
el abismo se expande

Agua de Fukushima
caótica fuerza
a tu paso la huella
del sangrado mortal

Letales ríos submarinos
costas americanas
emanan hirvientes
fluidos radioactivos




Mother Earth is Crying
By Frank Acosta

Mother Earth is crying
A wounded, ailing corpus
Commodified in avarice
As if creation has no soul
With arrogant contempt
Toxic greed poisons waters
Exhales vile to the four winds
In culpable immunity, mammon
Rips, defiles, scorches, her face
Impales her earthen womb
Children of the earth
Hear our mother’s wails of pain
In storms and violent torrent
Fertile fields turned wasteland
Foretell respect we have forgotten

Rise in a protective circle
Or sit idle in complicity
Loose the arrogance of dominion
Over earth and creation
Ways of ecology honor truth
Nature abides kindred spirits
Let us connected with one another
Bound in mutual stewardship
There is ample sacred harvest
To feed our global village
We are called in covenant
Of love, respect, compassion
Children, elders, ancestors, unborn
One sentient circle of being
Tlamish Tonatiuh, one sun upon us all





Love After Fukushima
By Teresa Mei Chuc

I want the
courage of
the elderly who
volunteered
in the clean-up
at the
Daiichi plant

To be filled
with a desire
to live
and know that death
is a reality of
isotopes rearranging
in the body

Five years later
cesium-137
cesium-134
are still leaking
into the Pacific

Bluefin tuna
a neon green

I think I am
growing two
hearts
They beat one
after the other
in a constant
drumming with
no silence in
between.


“Love After Fukushima” was published in the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Quarterly





Fukushima.
Por Silvia Santos

El mar
se lo lleva todo;
galopa, ganando espacio tierra adentro,
y barre, rompe, enmudece
los gritos de auxilio.
El bramido del mar
y objetos resquebrajados
es registrado en videos.
Ahora podemos ser espectadores
en tiempo real…
Pero mi mente
no entiende.
Azorada, contemplo,
leo las estadísticas
sobre la magnitud del daño,
miro el desastre
¿Y qué puedo hacer?
Fukushima Daiichi
tan lejos parece;
pero el mar es el mar
y sus corrientes muchas.
Llegará el eco
hasta las playas lejanas
con el rumor de olas fluorescentes Fukushima.
Fukushima,
tan lejos,
tan cerca,
Fukushima
Fukushima Daiichi.





Washed-Up Dinosaurs
By Kai Coggin

Sea Monsters
have been found on the shores of California beaches.
Two, in the last week.
Catalina Island, Los Angeles coast,
the first sea monster was 18 feet long,
an oar-fish, or sea serpent, that surfaced from
the dark, unknown depths of our ocean.
One of the ill-famed, mariner-eating monsters,
this lochness lookalike, this giant underwater dragon,
viking swallower, ship capsizer of ancient days,
died in such a humble and uneventful way,
washed up only 15 feet from the Catalina Island shore,
where a young marine biologist snorkeled in the afternoon sun.
She saw the flash of a silver tail shining underwater,
and dragged the half-floating sea serpent
to the sands where her friends and other beach goers stood amazed at her catch.
Sixteen people had to carry its majestic shimmering silver
body out of the gently crashing blue water,
posing for a photo-op with this beast of Nordic lore.
Its cold silver dollar eyes and ravaged silk mouth did not smile.
There is an old Japanese legend that says
that oar-fish beach themselves as an omen to
a Great Earthquake.
A reporter said that dozens of oar-fish
were found beached days before the devastating
2011 Fukushima 7.1 earthquake in Japan.
Is this sea serpent a harbinger of impending doom?
The smiling sixteen people in the Catalina Island photo,
with the silvery banner of ocean’s untimely demise spread across their chests,
don’t seem to think so.
Two days later,
another rare, great beast of the ocean
was found stranded on the shores of tourist-soaked
Venice Beach, California...
of all places.
An Alaskan saber-toothed whale,
all 15-feet and 2,000 blubbery pounds of her,
washed up on shore barely alive,
surrounded by a swarm of onlookers,
some who tried to push her back into the water to save her,
and some who did nothing but took out their cell-phones
and snapped selfies for Instagram and Facebook
with the dying whale in the background,
her muted, humble whale-song the soundtrack to barbarism.
The female saber-toothed whale
does not grow the giant saber-tooth;
only the male is strapped with this magical unicorn horn
protruding down like a sword out of the side of his mouth.
The female is a calm giant,
a frigid ocean deep swimmer who prefers the waters of the Arctic
to the warm California coast.
What brings her to Venice Beach?
There was undigested plastic and spooled nylon strands in her belly.
“Not enough to cause her death,” the scientists say.
Exactly how much plastic IS okay
to have permanently undigested in your belly?
Fuckers.
Washed up dinosaurs of the ocean’s dark and deep womb,
stranded sea monsters, falsely-accused viking hunters,
flailing on the shallow sands of an unfamiliar coast,
Humanity’s coast, where the bustling consumer landscape meets the water,
and destruction is the only language that nature understands.
What are these royal beasts trying to say to us that we are just not hearing?
I have my ear to a distant whale-song
and a sea serpent’s quiet hum of liquid movement.
I have my ear to the heart of something bigger than me
that I can so easily become swallowed in... willingly.
I have my ear to a nautilus’ emptied shell
to hear the Divine Secrets of the Ocean,
the indecipherable and infinite wishing of waves.
I am listening.


Meet the Poets
The Colors of Death By Sonia Gutiérrez
Querida Pachamama By Iris De Anda
Remembering Fukushima, Nagasaki and Hiroshima By Sharon Elliott
Now I know why they offered to work at Fukushima By Meg Withers
Tankas to Mother Earth By Alfonso Martínez Pretel
Abismo Por Xánath Caraza
Mother Earth is Crying By Frank Acosta
Love After Fukushima By Teresa Mei Chuc
Fukushima. Por Silvia Santos
Washed-Up Dinosaurs By Kai Coggin

Sonia Gutiérrez’s work promotes social and human dignity. She is an Interim Assistant Professor of English at Mt. San Jacinto College at the San Jancito Campus.

Her poems have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, La Jornada Semanal, Konch Magazine, and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice, among other publications. Her poem, “The Garden of Dreams” is forthcoming in El Tecolote Anthology. La Bloga’s “On-line Floricanto” is home to her Poets Responding to SB 1070 bilingual poems, including “Best Poems 2011” and “Best Poems 2012.” Her vignettes have appeared in AlternaCtive PublicaCtions, Huizache, and Sunshine Noir II.

Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña (Olmeca Press, 2013), is her debut publication. She is a contributing editor for the The Writer’s Response (Cengage Learning, 2016). Her manuscripts, Kissing Dreams from a Distance, a novel, and Legacy / Herencia, her second poetry collection, are seeking publication. Since 2014, Sonia has been a moderator for Facebook’s Poets Responding to SB 1070, founded by her Chicano role models, Francisco X. Alarcón.

Bio by Olga García. Iris De Anda's recent book of poetry Codeswitch: Fires From Mi Corazón is an offering, a pumping heart, and in that heart are 4 chambers that burn. Rage. Love. Revolution. Evolution. The idea for creating 4 chapters or chambers in Codeswitch came to Iris late one night as she was drifting off to sleep. "This gave me a blueprint to work with, where I plugged in my personal medicine wheel and the poems that spoke to each section."

Born and raised in Seattle and living in Oakland, Sharon Elliott has written since childhood. Four years in the Peace Corps in Nicaragua and Ecuador laid the foundation for her activism. As an initiated Ifa priest, she has learned about her ancestral Scot/Sámi/African Caribbean history, reinforcing her belief that borders are created by men, enforcing them is simply wrong.

Her book, Jaguar Unfinished, was published in 2012. She has featured in poetry readings in the San Francisco Bay area and was an awardee of the Best Poem of 2012, The Day of Little Comfort, http://labloga.blogspot.com/2013/01/best-poems-of-2012.html


Meg Withers teaches at Merced College. The author of Must Be Present to Win (Ghost Road Press), A Communion of Saints (Tinfish Press), and Shadowed: Unheard Voices (The Press at Fresno State), as poetry editor, she is dedicated to the creation of an egalitarian society.

Alfonso Martínez Pretel, born in Cartagena, Province of Murcia, Southeastern Spain, in July 1968. He studied Law at the University in Murcia. He is married and father of two male kids. Unpublished poet. Up to the date, he hasn’t had the opportunity to see his poems collected in a printed book, though he shares, almost daily, his Poetry in Facebook and also in his literary blog (http://miralfondo.blogspot.com).

Xánath Caraza es viajera, educadora, poeta y narradora. Su poemario Sílabas de viento recibió el 2015 International Book Award de poesía. También recibió Mención de Honor en la categoría poesía en español para los 2015 International Latino Book Awards. Su poemario Conjuro y su colección de relatos Lo que trae la marea han recibido reconocimientos nacionales e internacionales. Sus otros poemarios son Ocelocíhuatl, Noche de colibríes, Corazón pintado, Tinta negra (en imprenta), Donde la luz es violeta (en imprenta) y su segunda colección de relatos Pulsación (en progreso). Enseña en la Universidad de Missouri-Kansas City y da talleres de creación literaria en Europa, Latinoamérica y Estados Unidos. Caraza recibió la Beca Nebrija para Creadores de 2014 del Instituto Franklin, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares en España. Es columnista de La Bloga, Periódico de Poesía y Revista Zona de Ocio.
http://xanathcaraza.webs.com/

Frank de Jesus Acosta is principal of Acosta & Associates, a California-based consulting group that specializes in professional support services to public and private social change ventures in the areas of children, youth and family services, violence prevention, community development, and cultural fluency. Acosta provides writing and strategic professional support in research, planning, and development to foundations and community-centered institutions on select initiatives focused on advancing social justice, equity, and pluralism. In 2007, Acosta published "The History of Barrios Unidos," and is presently authoring and editing a book series focused on issues related to boys and young men of color for Arte Publico Press.

Author of two full-length collections of poetry, Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012) and Keeper of the Winds (FootHills Publishing, 2014), Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Saigon, Vietnam and immigrated to the U.S. under political asylum with her mother and brother shortly after the Vietnam War while her father remained in a Vietcong "reeducation" camp for nine years. Her poetry appears in journals such as CONSEQUENCE Magazine, EarthSpeak Magazine, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Kyoto Journal, The Prose-Poem Project, The National Poetry Review, Rattle, Whitefish Review, Verse Daily and in anthologies such as New Poets of the American West (Many Voices Press, 2010), With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century (West End Press, 2014), and Mo’ Joe (Beatlick Press, 2014). Teresa’s poetry is forthcoming in the anthology, Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees. Her new chapbook of poetry is How One Loses Notes and Sounds (Word Palace Press, 2016). Teresa Mei Chuc is a graduate of the Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont and teaches literature and writing at a public high school in Los Angeles.

Arturo Pizá Malvido © 2014.

Silvia Santos. Nacida en Mérida Yucatán, formó parte de la Banda de Música Infantil y Juvenil
Del Estado, la Compañía de Teatro del Estado y El Coro Magisterial Polifónico de la ciudad, como solista.
Estudia la carrera de Licenciado en Teatro de la Universidad Veracruzana.
Como actriz participó en unipersonales, diversos videos independientes y programas del ILCE. Se dedicó a la promoción y difusión de Son Jarocho con el grupo Híkuri, con el cual fue invitada por Universidad de Santa Barbara (UCSB) y SONando Santa Barbara, a impartir Master Class, talleres y presentaciones en escuelas de la región de Santa Bárbara y en foros de Los Angeles, CA. Grabaron los CD's "Híkuri en Vivo Santa Barbara" y "Ya no vale la Razón" grabado por Greg Landau. Participó en el CD "Entre mujeres" Womens Making Music Across Borders”, en diversas recopilaciones: Encuentros de jaraneros, Cuadernos de México, de Winter &Winter; Son Jarocho, Guía histórico-musical C.D. de Rafael Figueroa Hernández, entre otros.
Desarrolla igualmente su trabajo como atrezzista, artesana, joyera, compositora de Sones, ilustradora, cantante de otros géneros musicales, considerando la necesidad de un discurso multidisciplinario para enriquecer su visión del entorno.
Actualmente participa en diversos foros y encuentros de Narradores Orales con la pieza teatral “La cuentera y el Fandango”, con la cual acerca a diversos públicos la imaginería e historia del son Jarocho.
Participa en el XXIII Encuentro Internacional de Mujeres Poetas en el País de las Nubes, efectuado en noviembre del año 2015 en el estado de Oaxaca.

Kai Coggin is a poet and author living on the side of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, AR. She holds a BA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Texas A & M University. Kai writes poems on love, spiritual striving, injustice, metaphysics and beauty. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Lavender Review, Broad!, The Tattooed Buddha, Split This Rock, Yellow Chair Review, Drunk Monkeys, Snapdragon, ANIMA, Elephant Journal, and many other literary journals and anthologies.
Kai is the author of PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2014) and her forthcoming collection, WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press, 2016). Her poetry has recently been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Bettering American Poetry 2015. She is also a Teaching Artist with the Arkansas Arts Council, specializing in bringing poetry and creative writing to youth. www.kaicoggin.com

Review: A Crown for Gumecindo. Guest Interview: Thelma Reyna With Graciela Limón

Review: A Crown for Gumecindo.
Michael Sedano

Laurie Ann Guerrero. A Crown for Gumecindo. San Antonio: Aztlán Libre Press, 2015.
ISBN: 9780989778220 0989778223

There’s a special bond between a grandparent and a child that comes with an inverse joy. The elder gets to see the child grow into adulthood—there is no greater joy than seeing the child of one’s child born, grow from infancy to toddler to schoolkid, eventually into adulthood. The baby doesn’t see grampa as old but as grampa; wise, kind, indulgent, nurturing, “the best grandpa.” At some point in the grown nieta’s nieto's life, however, youth acknowledges with distress a parent’s age, the grandparent’s the more so.

Grandparents die, leaving a painful absence along with a lifetime of cherished memories. As fiercely as each loves the other, the finality of death and the progress of growth mean fading memory, replaced love, and renewed life’s cycle—the child becomes a parent, then a grandparent. Per omnia saecula saeculorum.

This collection battles that cyle. Letting go, refusing to let go, acknowledging absence. These strategies are the heart of Laurie Ann Guerrero’s fiercely contested battle with the painful fact of her grandfather’s death, memorialized in her breathtaking collection A Crown for Gumecindo.

Fifteen poems—the poet calls them ‘sonnets’—link to each other in  phrases that look back at the same time as they look onward, like memory and inheritance. The future builds on the past while the past maintains the integrity of its former existence. For Guerrero, concatenation refuses to relinquish her living grandfather even as each poem marks her passage away from his life leading into her journey of puro memory; that’s all that remains of his wisdom and that special relationship of a little girl to her grandfather. Puro memory and these fifteen poems.

If I were a poet, a collection like A Crown for Gumecindo is what I would want to bequeath my granddaughter to have from my time with her. Read this in memory of me.

Reviewing poetry is among the critic’s most difficult assignments when every piece in a collection has greatness. A Crown For Gumecindo, thus, is nearly impossible for a critic’s comprehension. One immediately sees that with the second and first poems, “Where the Dead Come to Speak” and “Love is Our Mother.” Because Guerrero repeats the final phrase of the first in the opening line of the next, no one poem genuinely stands alone as a singular expression. The fifteenth refers to the fourteenth refers to the thirteenth refers to the twelfth refers to the eleventh all the way to the first. And that first begins in ellipsis, an epigram by Valerie Martinez, “in this way / could she”.

A Crown for Gumecindo is a spellbinding collection that rises to moments of such sublimity that certain thoughts free the reader from page-bound thrall. In the second piece, for example, a reader comes to a screeching halt at the past-in-present expression, “he makes me choose / which of us will die by the hand of the other / and which of us will carry the dead home:” The poem is a way of casting off memory while enshrining its ongoing vitality.

In A Crown For Gumecindo are fifteen eulogies, each a reminder of Western traditions of saying good-bye. Saying good-bye is a kind of killing while safeguarding the dead for the living. For the artist, eulogy becomes a method of compartmentalizing, installing memory onto the page, prostheses for ineluctably absent love. There’s Catullus' farewell to his brother, ave atque vale, hail and farewell; Auden’s eulogy to Yeats, “Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest”, Guerrero’s lament, “We can’t / run the numbers, argue, make your mother’s bread / if you are always going to be dead.”

Resignation; you are always going to be dead. But Gumecindo, and Laurie Ann as she was in sorrow, will always be here on these wondrously evocative pages. “I’ve buried everything I’ve ever loved: You are always going to be dead.” These are poems that demand you read them again and again.

But I have at least one complaint. I am old, and my eyes are always going to be less than what they were. Aztlán Libre Press has laid out the text with ample white space, centered on the page. The powerful illustrations, created by Maceo Montoya, inspired by each poem, have their own page, masterfully evoking the accompanying sonnet. It’s a wonderful book. With all that real estate, I wish the design had used a 14- or 18-point type! As this press increases its offerings—A Crown For Gumecindo is Aztlán Libre’s first hard cover volume—I trust the press will have a bit more consideration for its readers.

Make that two. English majors will suspend their aesthetic immersion to count lines and look for rhyme schemes and other prosody. “Sonnet” is the culprit here. Guerrero knows the rules and chooses to break them at will. At times she intersperses lines from her journal and other meditations—per the dust cover; one doesn't know that otherwise. These add dimension and depth to the poetry irrespective of form, and send a reader to Tim Z. Hernández’ “Foreword” where he notes “the sonnet is typically comprised of fourteen lines, lends itself as an ideal medium for the subject at hand. There is something mythical at work here. . . . fourteen has a mythological association with death and reincarnation . . . . a returning, if you will, where fourteen poems gain momentum toward one final, fifteenth poem”. I would have been pleased not to think of that formalism and simply allowed form as it occurs, and divagation from it, to carry me spellbound onto the next and the next and the next and into that cycle.

Something there is that loves a monarchy. That’s a metaphor I find disquieting, being the scion of orange pickers, campesinos, peons and Junipero Serra’s slaves. Yet, there’s a sense about the crowned that fits the motive of this collection: Gumecindo is dead. Long live Gumecindo.

Order copies from the publisher, or via your local independent bookseller.


The Intriguing Life of Ximena Godoy: Interview with Graciela Limón
By Thelma T. Reyna

You have a long, distinguished background in scholarly writing, earning a Ph.D. from UCLA and teaching at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. You’re now focused on creative fiction. What was the major challenge you faced in transitioning from scholarly writing to fiction?

How to handle “freedom.” What I mean is, in writing critically, there are guidelines and rules that must be followed at all times, whereas in creative writing, inspiration is the guiding light. It was this freedom from form that I most felt as a challenge. Strange, isn’t it? In the beginning, I found myself always compelled to make certain that what I wrote was precise, completely researched instead of motivated by feeling or sentiment. In a word, I found that freedom daunting and a little intimidating. Later on, I loved it!

Both your academic and fictional writing spotlight your issues of interest: cultural identity, feminism, and social justice. How is tackling those issues via fiction different from addressing those topics academically?

Now that I write creatively, those issues you cite become humanized; they take on the form of personal stories, and they many times even become human beings. Now my issues leave behind numbers and facts to take on the identity of flawed, weak, but unforgettable people with names and faces.

Do your three dominant issues dovetail in today’s society, and, if so, how so? In your new novel?

I’ve written and published nine novels, and each time I’ve found it difficult not to bring forth the issues that most concern me, whether it be class struggles, women’s issues, cultural and trans-border experiences. And sincerely, I feel comfortable delving into these issues over and over again because I see their relevance to our society today. How do these concerns appear in my new novel, The Intriguing Life of Ximena Godoy? Here again I focus on the issue of the Latina, and how my protagonist breaks with the rules of convention and tradition that govern women in our culture. Oh, it doesn’t come free to her, as she pays a high price for her emancipation. However, Ximena Godoy makes her choices, and she is what she is.

Your new novel is set in the first half of the 1900’s in Mexico and the U.S. and details the traditional gender constraints faced by Ximena; her rebellion against this; and her choices as she navigates life on her own terms. How does she embody feminism in ways that resonate with today’s woman?

I believe that Ximena Godoy reflects many Latinas of our times in that she pursues her goals and ambitions while rejecting the rules set up for her by society. Does she do this to a flaw? Perhaps. The issue, however, is that she lives and loves on her terms, not by those established by a faceless society. It can be said, therefore, that although Ximena Godoy inhabited the first half of the 20th century, her life story resonates with the second part of the century, and indeed reaches powerfully into our current years.

Today’s younger women reportedly balk at calling themselves “feminists.” What’s different from the feminism of the “women’s liberation” pioneers 50+ years ago, and what women advocates value today? What’s the same?

Honestly, I have difficulty differentiating between the two terms: Women’s Lib and Today’s Advocates. However, I can cite one difference: I see today’s young Latinas as mostly well-educated and therefore more articulate, and they have a clearer vision. What I see as similar is that, essentially, we all are united by one force: To achieve what is good and best for women. I firmly believe that if as women we remember that we must respect what other women aspire to, how they express themselves, and how they go about achieving those goals, then this is to be Free. And to be Free is to be fulfilled and complete. Whatever label any woman chooses to adhere to, I’ll support her because I know that at heart, we’re on the same path.

"I find readers aren’t interested for the most part in our issues, unless we as authors concentrate on what I call the folkloric aspect of the Latino experience."

As a highly educated Latina author who has won prestigious literary honors—such as the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award, the Luis Leal Literary Award/UC Santa Barbara, and the Gustavus Myers Book Award—how do you perceive the publishing landscape today for American Latino/a authors?

Thank you for your wonderful words. You honor me. Then to your question: In many ways, I see the

Graciela Limón

publishing landscape as much improved from, say, 20 years ago when few Latina/o authors were even published. That has changed somewhat in that now there is a distinct interest on the part of publishers to publish our work. On the other hand, I find – or think I find – a very thin interest in our writings on the part of the readership. I find readers aren’t interested for the most part in our (Latino) issues, unless we as authors concentrate on what I call the “folkloric” aspect of the Latino experience. Even worse, there seems to me to be a negative curiosity regarding the underbelly of our culture. What I mean by this is, that unless a book deals with stereotypes (gangsters, convicts, drug addicts, prostitutes, and other dark figures), the reader turns away from the page. Yes, the landscape has improved, but we have a long way yet to go.

Since your first book publications in 1993—In Search of Bernabé (1993) and The Memories of Ana Calderón (1994)—has the world of book publication changed in any way for Latino/a authors in the U.S.?

As I suggest above, the main difference in publication is the expanded number of titles by Latina/o authors now available by publishers. The improvement has thus been one of exposure and a widened landscape.

How has your writing evolved since 1994? Have your dominant themes or literary interests and goals changed, and, if so, how?

I see my writing as evolved (and evolving) in many aspects, mostly in character development. I’ve always been fearful of falling into the trap of perpetuating stereotypes because it’s so easy to do just that. I’ve tried very hard all along to smash the expected molds, both female and males. Naturally, being a woman, my focus has always been on my female characters, hoping not to “neglect” the males. It’s difficult not to fall into the stereotype trap here because our culture almost encourages it. It’s undeniable that among us live the Dominant Machos and the Submissive Females. However, I’ve tried to conquer that reality by working with it, yet not dehumanizing those characters, thus keeping them from being stereotypes. Oh, it’s a tightrope! It’s very difficult! However, this is where I believe my writing has evolved, and continues to evolve, hopefully for the better.

You studied, taught, and wrote about Latin American and Chicano literature throughout your academic career. What are the most prominent bonds among all these Hispanic literary traditions?

What a wonderful question! Latin American and Chicana/o literature are bonded one to the other by several unbreakable ties. Those literatures have in common, first of all language that acts as a nexus. Although that language (Spanish/Portuguese/African tongues) is modified and colored by different accents and expressions in Latin America, as well as enriched by an added layer of English for us authors on this side of the border – we have retained that linguistic tone and rhythm that sets our literature apart and binds us to one other. A second connection, just as important as language – in my opinion – is our mysticism, which is a hybrid of Catholicism and Pre-Columbian beliefs. What a rich spiritual mix underpins all that literature that has come about on both sides of the border! And yet another tie, probably the most important, and connected to that hybrid mysticism, is our mestizo background. The stupendous mix of races that defines our literatures cements both expressions.

"I really think that we, on this side of the border, tend to be more direct and frank; perhaps some of us might be considered more audacious and blunt."

Where do these literatures diverge in their focus and method?

I believe that our focus changes with respect to social issues. We Chicana/o authors are naturally drawn to concentrate on the challenges and issues that confront our society, which in turn are different from those that our Latin American colleagues face. I really think that we, on this side of the border, tend to be more direct and frank; perhaps some of us might be considered more audacious and blunt. And I believe this comes to us as a result of being brought up in the U.S., where we’re taught to be outspoken. Where a Latin American author circumvents or evades, a Chicana/o aims straight at the heart of the issue without mincing words.

What are some of the main challenges facing Latina/o authors going forward? Latinos are projected to become the largest “ethnic group” in the U.S. within a few decades. How might this affect the American literary landscape?

I believe that the main challenge facing U.S. Latina/o authors is to always keep in mind that our mission is to be the voice of our particular society. Where there’s injustice, privation, or any other roadblock, it’s up to us the authors to shine a light on those issues, with the intention of being part of the solution. We must remember that we are, and will always be, a part of that “ethnic group,” not mere bystanders, and that because we have been given the power of the word, it’s our responsibility to use it wisely and always for the advance of our group. It’s a tough calling, but it is what it is! Thank you, Thelma, for giving me the opportunity of responding to your insightful and stimulating questions.


Graciela Limón. The Intriguing Life of Ximena Godoy. Virginia Beach VA: Café Con Leche (Koehler), 2015.  ISBN:  978-1-63393-000-1  Ebook  978-1-63393-001-8


Thelma T. Reyna, Ph.D., is the national award-winning author of four books: a short story collection, two poetry chapbooks, and a full-length collection of poetry. A Poet Laureate, she is the also editor of the newly-released Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology 2015.









Hot Town, Summer In The City

Book Club News
Stanford Latina Latino Alumns Select A Pair of Véa's Novels For September Junta

Héctor Tobar and members of Southern California Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Book Club

The Southern California Stanford Latina Latino Alumni Book Club met in Monrovia recently, discussing Héctor Tobar's Deep Down Dark. The menu of cosimiento, known also as casuela and cocido de res, originated in the text, augmented with empanadas (pollo and res), and dulces Chilenas.

Often joined by the author, Tobar did not attend this spirited discussion. The Club hosted him for its discussion of The Barbarian Nurseries. A visitor from Antofagasta, a northern Chile mining town, added insight as well as the pastries and empanadas. The club welcomes visitors and Stanford alumni.

Next session is scheduled for Sunday, September 20. Two novels by Alfredo Véa are on the agenda: La Maravilla and  Gods Go Begging.

Click here for details.

Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings: A Review by Donna Snyder

Xánath Caraza’s stories in Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings are formed of poetry, music, and the logic of dreams. Characters encounter an intermediary between mortals and gods. The line between life and death is breached. Stories emerge from the earth’s ocean and lakes or the rain that falls from the sky, and they remind us that water is the primordial fluid from which all life emerges, yet also the source of catastrophe, destruction, and death.

Caraza credits María Miranda Maloney, the founder of El Paso’s Mouthfeel Press, for encouraging her to write this collection, a change from her earlier prize-winning poetry collections. Since 2009 Mouthfeel has published twenty-five books by writers from Mexico, Uruguay, and throughout the United States, garnering recognition and accolades for itself and its writers.

 

Originally from Mexico, Caraza lives in Kansas City and teaches at the University of Missouri. On an international level, she teaches, serves as editor of literary and academic journals, performs, and publishes work in both English and Spanish. She has won honors in Central America, Europe, and the US. In this bi-lingual collection, she wrote each piece in Spanish, and then she, Sandra Kingery, and Stephen Holland-Wempe translated them into English. Spanish is a superb language for literature, with an innate rhythm and rhyme which can translate awkwardly, losing the natural poetry. I read the English translations which are beautiful in their own right, each line fluid and graceful.

 

Caraza’s stories vibrate with the sensuality of the female body as it moves through heat, reacts to a man’s gaze, responds to the rhythms of jazz, or fills the memory of a man being subjected to torture. Her writing is redolent of jungle, copal and flesh, the pungent taste and feel of food and drink, the gratification of tactile details. Color permeates her stories -- the flora and fauna of tropical Veracruz and the valley of Anahuac, the sea and sky in their various moods, the colors of cups, drinks, food, clothes, shades of skin. In “Scofield 207,” for example, everything that populates the story possesses a specific color. “Lunch Break” contains twelve references to color in its six brief paragraphs. The writer’s eyes are a prism that breaks the world into every vibrant hue, dazzling the reader, yet along with other sensuous details the myriad colors anchor us in an earthly world even while characters move back and forth between temporal planes, between reality and dreams, fantasy, and myth, between sanity and delusion. Sensuousness is not the only point to this book, however, which addresses refugees from political oppression and other topics of seriousness and depth.

Estimada Poeta Caraza in La Bloga House

The limits of time and space do not apply to Caraza’s characters. In “Nezahualcoyotl,” a pre-Columbian king and poet of the Alcolhua culture of Mexico appears in Barcelona, Spain. As he walks with the other character, called Venus, Nezahualcoyotl recites his poetry. The apprehension of language becomes a sense impression. Venus “felt poetry exude from [his] body. That was his aroma . . . that intoxicating essence . . . .” She is filled with emotion as “verses of his poetry were assaulting her.” The poetry becomes visible on her arms, then her entire body is “tattooed in poems.” Finally, her body disappears, leaving only words.

 

Caraza provides a dazzling lesson in synesthesia, the evocation of one sort of sense impression when a different sense is stimulated. In her stories, odors are colors, poetry a tactile experience. In “The One Behind,” Caraza describes a person as being able to see not only with his eyes “but also his skin, his ears and nose.” In “Water Passes Through my House, It comes to my House to Dream,” the narrator feels “musical notes soak into her being through the pores of her skin” and memory “hits her in the chest.” A breeze is described as pearly in “First Friday in Kansas City.”

Caraza stated in an interview that her “vision concentrates on female voices, their dreams, their struggles, life in general.” A woman’s voice relates all but one of these brief. These women make their own choices. They travel to foreign countries, as has Caraza. They recognize and embrace the mythic power of Man as King, Poet, and Seer. They encounter an intermediary between mortals and gods, between life and death, and demonstrate the gap between the writer’s existence and the fictions she creates. 

In some stories, characters are found reading or writing books with titles of Caraza’s own creations, underscoring the gap between the writer’s existence and the fictions she creates. The use of such metafictive devices forces upon the reader an awareness that the writer is really a writer, creating a separate, unreal reality that is fiction. In Caraza’s case, that fictional reality is both marvelous and terrifying. Caraza’s deft use of language immerses the reader in a swirl where disbelief is willingly suspended. Characters use seashells as a tool of divination, experience the supernatural, “dissolve from this dimension to reappear on the printed page.”

 

The great Spanish writer, Federico García Lorca, first explained the aesthetics of duende, inspiration born in darkness and anguish. The power of duende, a fascination with both death and great erotic desire, suffuses Xánath Caraza’s writing. Her duende, her eroticism and repeated invocation of death, terror, and cataclysm, and the power and authenticity of her language -- all dizzy the reader, precipitating a momentary experience of the sublime. Lo que trae la marea/What the Tide Brings liberates the reader from the sorrow or mere banality of existence.

Buy it from distributor

 

Buy it on Amazon

Mouthfeel Press website

La Bloga interview

Xánath Caraza website

Review in El Paso Times

 

 

La Guest Blogger Donna J Snyder

 

Believing that to give voice is an inherently political act, Donna Snyder offers free, weekly writing workshops through the Tumblewords Project which she founded in 1995. Until recently, she worked as an activist attorney on behalf of indigenous people, immigrant workers, and people with disabilities. Snyder has read her work in Alaska, Boston, New York City, Colorado, Los Angeles, and throughout Texas and New Mexico. In 2014, Chimbarazu Press released her collection Poemas ante el Catafalco: Grief and Renewal and Virgogray Press reissued her 2010 chapbook, I Am South, as a paperback book. Three Sides of the Same Moon is due from NeoPoiesis Press in 2015. She is a contributing poetry editor for Return to Mago.