Twelfth Night and the Poetry of Richard Vargas

 Melinda Palacio

   A friend asked me which book was my favorite of 2022. I usually have a hard time naming just one book or one thing in any category. Ask me my favorite color and I draw a blank. I wear every color. There was a time, back in my college days, when I only wore colors that pertained to the season of autumn because someone told me those were my colors and most days my body was covered in Emerald Green or brown. I fill silly for having limited my choices. Or ask me my favorite food and the pattern is the same. There was a time when I limited my meals to vegetables, now I eat all sorts of foods. I still don't have a favorite. Last year's standout was Richard Vargas's How a Civilization Begins. It may not be the only book I enjoyed but it was the first that popped into my mind. 

So many things about this book were appealing from the cover, the photo of a broken eggshell to the waxy mat finish and how the weight of the book felt in my hands. The book by Mouthfeel Press with a forward by Margaret Randall showed much care for the precious cargo between the pages. The civilization Vargas describes is the one that holds his life. From the kid who grew up in South Central Los Angeles to the man who served his country and became a poet who calls for unity, as seen in the poem, i am waiting for a peace. Next time pie day or March 14 comes along, I will ask Richard if I can share this poem for it also waits for a "piece of pie/with silky-smooth filling/that melts in my mouth. The playful poem has a wonderful way of imagining peace through a piece of pie or a poem shared by all. 

Richard Vargas is the hero the uncelebrated. His true fans take comfort in the fact that he has not sold out. For all his education, he continues to celebrate the quiet life. However, cliché the brooding poet with a difficult father, he is the voice of America, of the Chicano who struggles to remember sparse and rarely used Spanish to comfort a young asylum seeker dumped by the border patrol in "labor of love." The book's forward by Margaret Randall asks if this book will place Vargas at the 'very pinnacle of poetry speaking out of and for contemporary life?' While becoming a household name might be a fair aspiration, for now, Richard Vargas does not need accolades to write poems that gut the reader with the longing the comfort of a man who can create an entire world with "just two lovers/in the dark/holding on/not going/anywhere/lying in our/wet spot/waiting for/the world/to end."

'Perchada estás / Perching'

 

Perchada estás / Perching

 

Like a composer, Xánath Caraza calls on her senses to compose a symphony of language and sound to create a pastoral wonderland of poems. Each poem is a landscape of its own, a gem of word and image. In this collection, the poet takes her pen and braids memory and imagination in dream-like strokes of rich language to settle our minds into a rhythm of nature’s gifts. Caraza’s poems elicit an emotion which transports us to the seashore, where “After the rain / the sea, liquid diamond / you accompany the morning / without shadows” and “The urgency of the hummingbird / reaches early morning.” The reader is confronted with an “Inflamed sunrises / murmur secrets / before / incredulous gazes.” These poems are meant to awaken and enlist our senses as no other collection has done. We are invited to meditate, dream and imagine a world where nature is not a wilderness—the other— but our home, and we are its stewards. I feel the joy and loss as I read the collection.

 

 

—M. Miranda Maloney, author of The Lost Letters of Mileva and forthcoming novel The Moon in Her Eyes.

 

 

Como compositora Xánath Caraza evoca los sentidos para arreglar una sinfonía de lenguaje y sonido que crea un mundo fantástico pastoral de poesía.  Cada poema es un paisaje por sí mismo, una gema de palabra e imagen.  En esta colección la poeta toma su pluma y entrelaza memoria e imaginación en pinceladas de ensueño de lenguaje enriquecido que predisponen nuestras mentes a entrar en el ritmo de las gracias de la naturaleza.  Los poemas de Caraza provocan una emoción que nos transporta a la orilla del mar, donde “Después de la lluvia / el mar, diamante líquido / acompañas la mañana / sin sombra” y “La urgencia del colibrí / alcanza la madrugada”. El lector es confrontado por “Las albas llamaradas / susurran secretos / ante / la incrédula mirada”.  Estos poemas tienen la intención de despertar y reclutar nuestros sentidos como ninguna otra colección lo ha hecho antes.  Somos invitados a meditar, soñar e imaginar un mundo donde la naturaleza no es indómita—la otra—sino nuestra casa y nosotros somos sus custodios.  Siento placer y pérdida mientras leo esta colección.

 

—M. Miranda Maloney, autora de The Lost Letters of Mileva y la novela venidera The Moon in Her Eyes.

 

 

Perchada estás / Perching (Mouthfeel Press, 2021)

by Xánath Caraza.  Translated by Sandra Kingery.

 

A Poetics of Incantation by Denise Low-Weso

 A Poetics of Incantation by Denise Low-Weso

 

Sky, water, jade forests, sun—these are the palettes used by Xánath Caraza in her new book Perchada estás/Perching (Mouthfeel Press 2021). She creates poems that are paintings—until they start to move and rise into the heavens. Three sections of the book move from element to birds to language: “Agua/Water,” “Colibrí/Hummingbird,” and “Sílabas/Syllables.”        

One of the perfect poems is “Primavera / Spring”:

El vieto ruge

entre las hojas.

 

Calla tu nombre,

sella mi boca.

 

La inunda de tibia agua,

anuncia la primavera.   (44)

 

The wind roars

between the leaves.

 

It silences your name,

seals my mouth.

 

Fills it with warm water,

announces the arrival of spring.   (45)

 

The connection of breath and wind, words and the human body are implicit in this gust of a poem—apparently simple yet rich with implications and undertones. Caraza is a musician, as she orchestrates tones and rhythms in the couplets. Slant end rhymes enliven the Spanish—“ruge” paired with “hojas,” “nombre” with “boca,” and “agua” with “primavera.”  In both Spanish and English, the parallel phrasings are incantatory.

She is a painter as she arranges colors and perspectives. She is a shaman as she connects human will to the powers of nature. Caraza sweeps her audience along with her as she invokes the heavens and hidden secrets of the Earth. Her poem “Secreto/Secret” opens the book, and its first lines assert the primary theme: “Primero fuimos agua/que fluía en las cavernas/más oscuras en silencio”; “First we were water /which flowed in silence /in the darkest caverns” (11-12). The pathways of underground water are secret and essential to the network of life. The water can be amniotic fluid; it can be the first waters of creation; it can be the nearest seashore waves. The poem proceeds to illuminate states of water, from “remolino/whirlpool” to “giro acuático en la roca/swirl on the rock” to “vapor ardiente/scalding vapor.” The poem is not overtly political, but it underscores the importance of clean, potable water for a planet of finite resources. It celebrates the discrete spirit of water.

Caraza’s poetry examines the body in relationship to the surrounding natural and human-made environments. The poem “El reflejo de la luz /The Reflections of Light” ends with these stanzas:

La cola de la ballena

nace de la profundidad.

 

Sella mis ojos con sal,

los pulmones explotan.

 

Luz de luna en la piel.   (31)

 

...The flukes of the whale

surface from the depths.

 

Seal my eyes with salt,

My lungs explode.

 

Moonlight on the skin. (33)

 

The whale’s tail, with its individual identifying marks, coexists with the narrator’s eyes, lungs, and skin—which identify the person. Moonlight and sea depths define the world’s dimensions for both the whale and the human. Numerous references to nature in the poems are linked closely to the person who narrates the poems, through language on the page and through her body. Many references to la poesía/poetry are in these pages, and they are essential to understanding the direction of the poet’s thought. Wind takes form in hurricanes, storms, and breezes, and it connects to persons through poetic declarations, whether an individual is formally a poet or not.

            Caraza’s body of work emphasizes the power of nature’s elements and its denizens—animals, human, even the vibrant jungle plants that have visible life force. Her first full-length book Conjuro (Mammoth Publications 2012) declaims her intention of casting spells with her words. She ends this book with the poem “Vagones/Train Cars,” and states, “Viento, sopla y esparce / mis palabras, / enrédate conmigo”; “Wind, blow and spread/ my words,/ entangle yourself with me” (98-99). The poet commands the wind to comingle with the narrator’s physical and spiritual selves.

Caraza is one of the strongest oral readers I have ever seen. Even on the printed page, her power comes alive. This is an uplifting book that replaces fear with strength and doubt with an unwavering vision of the cosmos. This is much needed hope in our times.

 

—Denise Low-Weso, former Poet Laureate of Kansas

 

 

Perchada estás / Perching (Mouthfeel Press 2021)

by Xánath Caraza.  Translated by Sandra Kingery.

 

 

 

Paul M. Worley on _Perchada estás / Perching_

Paul M. Worley on _Perchada estás / Perching_

 

“Water,” “Hummingbird,” “Syllables,” the three sections of Xanath Caraza’s Perching bring the reader into the luminous world of a poetic search for elemental origins and unity. From the lightless water moving through caves that begins the first poem, “Secret,” to the “Notebooks on the ground/ sprinkled like water,” of the final poem, “Train Cars,” the volume leads us down the paths where poetry can be discovered as part of the natural world.

 

In “Secret” and throughout the rest of the volume, the protean poetic voice shifts in and out of different physical forms, moving through different experiences, being “Water both fresh and salt/in the shadows,” “scalding vapor,” and “Liquid diamond from/the darkest caverns.” The volume is full of paradoxical juxtapositions that delight and surprise like this image of water as a “liquid diamond,” which combines commonly recognized qualities of water (fluid; sparkling) with its ability to carve, shape, and hone deep withing the earth. Indeed, the first section, “Water,” situates this element as occupying an eternally liminal space, something that we penetrate (as in “Dissipate”) and that penetrates us in turn, filling our mouths as in the section’s last poem “Spring.” This reorientation towards cycles and reciprocity with the natural world is underscored by references to several Mesoamerican deities such as Chaac (a rain god) and Ehécatl (a wind god) whose names are untranslated and unfootnoted for the reader. We are mean to move closer, to work, in order to achieve a more intimate relationship with the world around us.

 

The following section makes a similar, more muted reference to Mesoamerican cosmology by being titled “Hummingbird,” the bird which serves as an avatar of the Mexica god Huitzilopochtli. In an image of the overflowing abundance and passion contained within the natural world, the poem “Huitzil” upends patriarchal notions of desire and sexuality, as the hummingbird (whose beaks penetrates flowers to drink from them) cannot “tame/the desires of the jungle,” a stunning image of an inexhaustible, unconquerable feminine. Even as the hummingbird moves through the world throughout this section, it is nonetheless contained by the world and the poems themselves. In essence, we are moved well beyond a simple male/female binary and are invited to understand things from a more holistic perspective in which each is an integral part of the other.

 

The final section, “Syllables,” is a profound listening to the world around us, understanding its movements, rhythms, and sounds as constituting their own language we are attentive and willing to listen. Even in the poem “Silent Eternity,” things yet speak as the poet outs pen to page and things yet “speak” if only in the silent, written form. As a representation of such silent speaking, Perching is a finely attuned celebration of human existence in either English or Spanish, and challenges us to re-engage with the world, our lives, and how we experience them.

 

—Paul M. Worley

 

Perchada estás / Perching (Mouthfeel Press, 2021)

by Xánath Caraza.  Translated by Sandra Kingery.

Una cita literaria en el Writers Place en Kansas City por Xánath Caraza

 

Una cita literaria en el Writers Place en Kansas City por Xánath Caraza

 

El 6 de noviembre a las 7 p.m. CST el Writers Place en la Ciudad de Kansas abre sus puertas para una lectura poética en Zoom con María Miranda Maloney, Edward Vidaurre y la que escribe.  Será una noche para celebrar la palabra y Día de muertos. Ojalá y nos acompañen.

 

Maria Miranda Maloney is an editor, publisher, educator, and the author of The Lost Letters of Mileva (Pandora Lobo Press 2014 and Yuguru 2019) and The City I Love (Ranchos Press 2011). Her work has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, MiPOesias, The Más Tequila Review, Acentos Review, Huizache, The Texas Weather Anthology, Huizache, Progetto 7Lune Poesia, Xispas: Journal of Chicano Art, Culture and Politics, Smithsonian Latino Virtual Museum, The Catholic Reporter, and Texas Review, as well as other national and international journals. She is the founder of Mouthfeel Press. She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso. She currently lives in east Texas. 

Edward Vidaurre is the author of seven collections of poetry. He was the 2018-2019 City of McAllen, Texas Poet Laureate, a four-time Pushcart-nominated poet, and publisher of FlowerSong Press. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Texas Observer, Grist, Poet Lore, The Acentos Review, Poetrybay, Voices de la Luna, as well as other journals and anthologies. Vidaurre resides in McAllen, Texas with his wife and daughter.

 

Xánath Caraza is the author of fifteen collections of poetry, and two short story collections. Caraza has been translated into English, Italian, Romanian, and Greek; and partially translated into Nahuatl, Portuguese, Hindi, and Turkish. For the 2018 International Latino Book Awards, she received First Place for Lágrima roja and Sin preámbulos/Without Preamble for “Best Book of Poetry in Spanish” and “Best Book Bilingual Poetry”.  Syllables of Wind received the 2015 International Book Award for Poetry. She writes for La Bloga, Seattle Escribe, SLC, and Monolito. 

 

 

 

 

Aguacamino/Waterpath: La poesia de Rossy Evelin Lima

Olga García Echeverría

"Let me gather the river with my hands," writes Rossy Evelin Lima in her latest poetry collection, Aguacamino/Waterpath. Published by Mouthfeel Press in 2015, Lima's collection contains 20 bilingual poems that delve into womanhood, memory, migration, and roots. There is a lot of humo, the floating ghost of nostalgia, roaming through Lima's pages.  "May the abandoned house in the south / never put out its flare..."

There is also water that transforms from small tears to huge mirrors, from river to pathway, from bodies to borders. The immigrant voice in this collection gives testimony to the often unheard/unseen. "Somos los invisibles, no nos busques...Nos comimos cuidadosamente las huellas..."

We're honored to have Rossy with us today, answering five preguntas about her poetry and her book Aguacamino/Waterpath.

  

Bienvenida a La Bloga, Rossy. ¿Cuándo empezaste a escribir y qué fue lo que te llamó a la poesía?

 

Cuando empecé a escribir necesitaba una manera directa para expresar mis sentimientos de confusión, nostalgia y miedo pero necesitaba una forma que me permitiera negarlo todo. Así, podía escribir lo que no me atrevía a contar y refugiarme tras la respuesta “es un poema que se me ocurrió.” Después, encontré que la poesía tenía el poder de tejer lazos con las personas que me escuchaban o me leían, sin importar si compartían mi experiencia o no. Las imágenes que yo creaba en mi poesía se convertían en telas que otras personas podían usar para expresar su propia historia. En una ocasión, después de una presentación en la que leí mi poema titulado Silencio, una mujer se acercó para decirme que ese poema se lo leería a su hija de 8 años que era sordomuda. Cuando me preguntó por qué había escrito ese poema al silencio, sentí que la historia del momento en el que lo había escrito ya no importaba, desde ese momento Silencio dejaba de ser mi poema, y se convertía en el poema de Mayra. Esto es lo que más amo de la poesía, cuando un poema deja de ser mío.

El agua aparece mucho en tus poemas, en ríos, lluvia, islas, lágrimas, caminos, en gotas, y hasta en el agua que falta. "No nos has ofrecido agua desde que llegamos" escribes en "La cuidad del inmigrante." ¿Podrías compartir poquito sobre la presencia recurrente del agua en tu trabajo?

Cuando crucé el Rio Grande a los 13 años, caminamos por varias horas bajo el sol de septiembre. Antes de cruzar no sabíamos que caminaríamos tanto, y no llevamos nada para calmar nuestra sed. En México, yo jamás había sentido esta sed. Trataba de pasar saliva y mi lengua se quedaba adherida a mi paladar. Esta sed literal se transformó en una característica latente de mi situación como inmigrante indocumentada. Sed de entendimiento al no saber el idioma, sed de aceptación al saberme diferente a mis compañeros, sed de futuro, mucha sed de futuro. Mi relación con el agua, antes de llegar a Estados Unidos era muy diferente. El agua para mi siempre fue relacionada con la felicidad familiar de días en la playa, paseos en lancha con mi abuelo, días calurosos que calmábamos jugando con agua en el patio. Esta yuxtaposición negativa y positiva del agua resulta en la presencia constante de este elemento. Para poder conciliar la pesadilla con el hermoso recuerdo tuve que aceptar que ambas me pertenecen, están dentro de mí, ya no en guerra si no transformadas en camino.

En "El poema de mil caras" hay un verso que dice, "no hay fuego que arda más que la distancia." Siento este verso cada vez que lo leo. Siento que es un verso que contiene mucho en pocas palabras.

Este poema a mi abuelo utiliza el humo y el fuego ya que él fumaba mucho. A veces pensamos en la nostalgia como un sentimiento tenue, tranquilo e intermitente. Sentir nostalgia puede ser incluso más leve que estar triste, puede ser incluso un sentimiento que se va en cuanto hay algo más importante que hacer. Para mi la nostalgia arde como la llama constante que no logra apagar el olvido. La distancia entre mi abuelo y yo es el fuego presente diariamente. No es nostalgia, no se ha hecho menos con el tiempo, por el contrario crece hasta el cielo ya que mi querido abuelo murió a finales del año pasado y no pude despedirme de él ya que DACA(Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals) no me permite salir del país.

Eres ambos escritora y traductora y tu poemario es completamente bilingüe (traducido por Gerald Padilla) ¿Cuáles fueron tus razones por no traducir tus propios poemas?

Traducir poesía es sumamente complejo, requiere una interpretación y reinterpretación del poema, una responsabilidad con el significado. La primera vez que traté de traducir un poema de mi autoría, me di cuenta de que no lograba encontrar la palabra en inglés que fuera equivalente a mi palabra en español. El español es mi primer idioma, yo siento, vivo y sueño en español. Me tomó días traducir un poema y al final me di cuenta de que no había logrado capturar la esencia de lo que había sentido, no estaba contenta. No me había pasado esto en mi carrera como traductora, amo la traducción y sus múltiples posibilidades. Entonces, Gerald me dijo que traduciría algunos de mis poemas. Sus traducciones fueron tan exactas que al leerlas no reconocí las palabras que yo tejí en español, solamente el sentimiento y las imágenes que había puesto en esos poemas. Me pude encontrar en esas traducciones y decidimos traducir el resto de los poemas para crear mi primer poemario bilingüe, Aguacamino/Waterpath. El trabajo realizado por Gerald va más allá de la traducción, ya que como se puede apreciar en el título, me gusta crear nuevas palabras compuestas, disfrasismos que el traductor debe de crear también.

 

Vas a tener una fiesta en tu casa y puedes invitar a 5 escritores/artistas famosos (de cualquier época, vivos o muertos). ¿A quién invitas, por qué los invitas, y qué les das de comer?

 

El simple hecho de pensar en esta fiesta me puso una sonrisa en el rostro. ¡Vamos a planear! Invitaría a Macuilxochitzin, quien dijo “Yo doy gozo al dador de vida.” La invitaría porque para mi la vida debe de ser una celebración constante de nuestras raíces, de la mezcla y la naturaleza única de cada uno de nosotros. Invitaría a Miguel Hernández y a Lucha Corpi porque sus poemas me mostraron que mi voz como poeta era valida, porque sus letras me acompañaron desde los 16 años cuando estaba tratando de encontrarme. También invitaría Alfredo Pérez Alencart, para platicar sobre su reciente libro entre Éxodos y Exilios, textos que hablan sobre la universalidad del sentimiento del emigrante. Invitaría a mi madre, Yolanda Valdez, que aunque oficialmente no es poeta, su amor y su ejemplo me han enseñado más de la poesía que ningún libro, ¡y además porque ella nos haría de comer! El menú serían unos ricos tamales veracruzanos con agua de horchata. Después de comer, iríamos al mar a imaginar que no hay fronteras.

 
Beautiful. Gracias, Rossy. Nos despedimos con un poema tuyo lleno de humo, memoria, y mil caras.
 

El poema de mil caras

Este poema se titula

marinero del golfo,
y si empiezo a recordar

se llama mano de tigre.

Cuando me siento en el suelo

pensando en los zapatos

que usaba de niña

se llama abuelo de humo,

también se llama así

cuando encuentro una caja

de Raleigh en el suelo

Este poema se llama la historia incompleta,

se llama el regreso, el regalo de la memoria.

Cuando escucho el grito de la gaviota

este poema se llama lancha azul,

se llama trapiche corta raíces.

Cuando pienso en el futuro

este poema se llama las historias invencibles,

se llama conocerme por medio de tus cuentos.

Este poema tiene mil caras

y al verlo de frente me dice,

“no hay fuego que arda más que la distancia”

Y el recuerdo hunde su mano en mi corazón en llamas.

 

Rossy Evelin Lima, linguist and translator. Her fist poetry book Ecos de Barro published by Otras Voces Press was recognized by the International Latino Book Awards 2014. She received the Gabriela Mistral Award 2010 by the National Hispanic Honor Society. She was awarded the international poetry award Concorso di poesia Altino in Italy (2015). The author has been published in numerous anthologies and literary magazines in Spain, Canada, USA, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, Italy and Mexico. Lima has been featured in the Smithsonian Latino Night of the Dead Celebration and invited to be a TEDx McAllen speaker. Her second book of poetry Aguacamino was published by Mouthfeel Press. Lima co-organizes the Sin Fronteras Independent Book Fest and is Co-Founder of the Festival Internacional de Poesía Latinoamericana.



www.rossylima.com http://www.rossylima.com/

OCELOCÍHUATL (Mouthfeel Press, 2015)

Pour Nohemi Gonzalez et Michelli Gil Jáimez, Ocelocíhuatls.

Pour Patricia Latour et Francis Combes de cœur au cœur.

                                                     Xánath Caraza

Guest Blogger:  Lucha Corpi

  

OCELOCÍHUATL by Xanath Caraza (Mouthfeel Press, 2015)

          The title of Xánath Caraza’s poetry collection, Ocelocíhuatl (Mouthfeel Press, 2015), combines the meaning of Ocelot, a mid-size feline of the jaguar family, with that of Cíhuatl, the Nahuatl word for woman. Ocelocihuatl is the “Jaguar Woman.”  

Ocelots are solitary felines. Their vision is as keen in the dark as in sunlight. Comfortably resting on a high tree branch or cooling off in streams, they are air, water and earth creatures. Despite urban encroachment on their diverse habitats, the jaguar species have managed to survive in the tropical areas of Mexico, Central and South America, and the forests of Southwestern United States.

The Olmec, Mayan and Aztec civilizations revered jaguars as mighty hunters and beings who were able to move between worlds—environments—with ease. So shamans conjured the jaguar’s spirit—nagual--to co-exist with theirs as one and endow them with the vision and the skills to survive in two distinct worlds, to protect themselves from the evil of others, and to preserve that which is sacred.  Ocelocihuatl is one of those shamans, transformed by her nagual into the Jaguar Woman.

The central poem that provides Caraza’s collection with its title is “Ocelocihuatl”.  We see Jaguar Woman at first as the animal in her natural tropical habitat, the place of origin. She feels the humidity in the morning air, then enjoys the luscious green tapestry of the jungle bathed by summer rains. She tastes life’s liquid bounty as she gently bites into the “throbbing unsuspecting heart.” As her nagual begins to transform the shaman, her hands reach for the alphabet of a new day and rip apart the veil of opalescent mist covering the pages. She makes “poetry” hers. She breathes in the scent left by others, those no longer present in her world(s).  

Because the poem “Ocelocihuatl” is not the first poem in the book and, actually, comes half way through it, I was intrigued by Caraza’s decision to place such a pivotal poem there. The organization of a poetry collection is the poet’s way to guide us as we enter, move through and exit each poetic space and to lead us to the places where we need to be to grasp the poet’s intention, her vision. With that in mind, I read the poems again, but this time in reverse from last to first poem. I realized that I had been on two journeys, one that took me north and east, the other south and west, intersecting at the place of origin at the moment of rebirth, described in the poem “Ocelocihuatl.”

          In terse narrative, incantatory or intensely lyrical poems, Caraza chronicles Jaguar Woman’s odyssey to the sacred places of the heart, in Bosnia, The United States, and Mexico in modern times. We journey with her to faraway places where the spirit—wounded by injustice, strife, violence and death—must take refuge to remember and to heal. There, she grieves for the dead, for those persecuted, banished or “disappeared” beyond hope of ever being found.

Ocelocihuatl also pays homage to the survivors, the Jaguar Women of the world: The activist Aida Omanovic in the once multiethnic city of Mostar, Bosnia, almost devastated three decades before, during the Croatian-Bosnian ethnic conflict. With aching arms and bare hands, Aida-Ocelocihuatl dragged the bodies of 27 of her compatriots and dear friends killed during the conflict. With no other tools than her bleeding fingers, she dug their graves, buried them in an orchard, and planted 27 cherry trees, one next to each grave to commemorate their sacrifice.

Through the liquid eyes of mothers searching for their lost sons to bring them home, Ocelocihuatl looks for the familiar faces of “the disappeared,” the 43 student teachers in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, who were taken by a drug cartel in cahoots with the local authorities for protesting their corruption. “The 43” haven’t yet been found, dead or alive. In Missouri, Jaguar Woman makes hers the anger and sorrow of Michael Brown’s mother, relatives, friends and hundreds of people, raising their voices in protest at the systematic killing of African American youth by the police.

 Ocelocihuatl returns to the place of origin, the Mexican jungle, to renew. From there she heads south, to recover the ancestors’ footsteps as they journeyed to their temples and other sacred places in pre-Columbian times from trodden paths along the Puuc Route. She does not return to the place of origin this time. Instead, she seeks the company of poets, dead or alive. The last poem in the collection is an ode to the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. “Paz” also means “peace.” The poem is indeed a tribute to the poet. But it is also an affirmation of her belief that peace among peoples is possible.

For Ocelocihuatl, Woman-Jaguar and poet, all winding paths eventually lead back to that secret site, where the poems are the seeds, “dark tide of syllables (that) spreads over the paper” and break through to the “sub-soil of language” to take roots, extend limbs to the heavens, blossom and  bear fruit in the sacred places of the heart.

          ¡Enhorabuena, Xanath Caraza! Encore!

 

Lucha Corpi

Oakland, California, 2015

For preorders click here: Mouthfeel Press Ocelocihuatl
 

Ocelocíhuatl by Xánath Caraza (Mouthfeel Press, 2015)

Translated by Sandra Kingery

Cover Art by Pola Lopez

 

Un Poco De Todo

Xánath Caraza

 

2016 NACCS TEJAS POETRY BOOK AWARD

 

*Please Circulate Widely*

 

National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies—Tejas Foco

 

Description of Award:

 

NACCS-Tejas invites nominations and submissions for its 2016 NACCS-Tejas Poetry Book Award. The 2016 NACCS Tejas Award for Non-Fiction Book Committee will consider any book published in 2015 in Texas or elsewhere. We welcome full-length collections of poems. We will recognize an outstanding work of poetry that best represents a significant topic related to the Mexican-American and/or Chicana/o experience in Texas. The award will be presented at the NACCS-Tejas Foco annual conference to be held at Lone Star College–Kingwood in Houston, Texas, February 18-20, 2016. There are no restrictions on the number of nominations per press or on the number of individuals—authors or readers—who can nominate a text. Books previously nominated for this award are not eligible. Nominations will be reviewed by a committee of NACCS-Tejas Foco members.

 

Procedure for Nominations:

Publishers or authors wishing to submit books for consideration should send a copy of the book to each of the committee members at the addresses below by the deadline of November 15, 2015. Nominations should include a submission cover letter, including the name of the author, the title of the book, press, and the date of publication.

 

All nominations must be received (not postmarked) by December 15, 2015.

For additional information, you may contact the Committee Chair Christopher Carmona at christophercarmona@myartelibre.com.

 

Committee Members

 

Christopher Carmona

939 W. De Soto Ave.

Alamo, TX 78516

 

Isaac Chavarría

608 N. Linares St.

Alton, TX 78573

 

 

Rossy Evelin Lima

700 Ciro St.

Donna, TX 78537

 

 

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Call for Papers University of North Georgia 2016 Arts and Letters Conference
                                                
                                                  February 26-28, 2016
                                             
                                                      Culture and Place

The 2016 University of North Georgia Arts and Letters Conference will explore the intersection of culture and place. Place is more than location—it is people, it is material, it is climate, it is culture. Places are made through human practices and institutions and are specifically designed and constructed to evoke memories, trigger identities, and embody histories in material form. Thus, the creation of place assigns meaning and helps to define who we are, and often, who we are not. We must ask not just how places come to be, but how and why they are important for social processes, cultural practices, and historical change. How do these connections play out? Are culture and place best understood as two separate entities, or as two dynamically related processes that are best understood through each other?

This interdisciplinary conference will take up these questions and others concerning culture and place. We welcome proposals from all disciplines on a wide range of topics. Possible themes include (but are not limited to):
How have climate, topography, etc., intersected with culture to shape political movements and/or the histories of states?

How have culture and place intersected to produce or perpetuate forms of (intersecting) oppression?

In what ways do culture and place intersect to produce conceptions of “natural” and “normal”?

How do the intersections of culture and place affect or produce notions of objectivity and subjectivity?

What is there to discover in the intersections of culture and place in music, literature, art, science, mathematics, history, philosophy, etc.?

How do places and material forms intersect with social practices, social structures, norms, values, power and inequality?

How does material culture shape and reflect place?

What is the relationship between travel, culture, and place?

How are places made and shaped through cultural practices and cultural forms (such as tourism, development, popular culture, material culture, the environment, etc.)?

How are race, history, power, politics, memory, and culture emplaced?

A CFP will go out at a later time for an edited volume on the conference theme. Faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars are welcome.

Please submit the following

An abstract of 300-400 words
Five Key Words
A brief biography

to: http://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/alconf/

by October 9th, 2015.

When submitting a proposal for a Panel, please indicate the names of all the panelists under “Presenter Information” and please upload abstracts for each panelist with a space between each.

Contact Sara Mason Sara.Mason@ung.edu or
George Wrisley George.Wrisley@ung.edu with questions.

 

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Ayúdanos a hacer de este festival una realidad.

Cada dólar es una gran contribución.

Latino Poets NY está preparando el cuarto Festival Latinoamericano de Poesía que se celebrará en la ciudad de Nueva York desde 11 hasta 13 noviembre, 2015. Poetas de gran trayectoria y calidad literaria compartirán su poesía en escuelas, universidades, cafés y centros comunitarios y librerías. Latino Poets NY se enorgullece en anunciar que durante tres años consecutivos hemos sido capaces de mantener festivales exitosos.

LPFNY también publica la antología Festival Latinoamericano de Poesía, un libro que incluye poemas de todos los poetas participantes.

Hoy, le pedimos a ser parte de este esfuerzo. Su generosa donación hará posible continuar la promoción del uso del español a través de la lectura y la escritura de la poesía.

¡Muchas gracias!

¿Nos ayudas compartiendo esta campaña?  http://www.latinopoetsny.com/

Karla Coreas
Directora
Latino Poets NY

 

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Finally, soon to be released my new bilingual book of poetry, Ocelocíhuatl (Mouthfeel Press, 2015), translated by Sandra Kingery.  Here is a sneak preview of a detail of the art for the cover by the amazing Los Ángeles artist, Pola Lopez.  More to come soon.  Viva la poesía!

 

Ocelocíhuatl by Xánath Caraza (Mouthfeel Press, 2015)