Yago
S. Cura reviews Tomás Riley’s Post
Chicano Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2010)
And all that is true but what I had
not been able to express was that Odas a
Fútbolistas is only one example of the many exciting literary projects
undertaken by Hinchas de Poesía. Hinchas
de Poesía, is also the name for the digital arm that produces “a
digital codex of contemporary Pan-American writing,” and which regularly
publishes contemporary poetry, prose and literary criticism including book
reviews. Currently in issue 8, Hinchas de
Poesía features a book review of Tomás Riley’s Post Chicano
Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2010):
“I don’t imagine Tomás Riley’s message
in Post Chicano Stress Disorder (Tinta Vox, 2010) to be a decidedly
political one; his brand of poetry is political as a matter of existence,
rather than of taste or style, “so what is young/ and brown so far a living/
corpse of language?” In Post Chicano Stress Disorder, Riley spits sparse
bars cadenced by Hip-Hop Mythology, PoMo’s nuanced wordplay, and that threshold
where the political becomes the factual. Riley’s book is a manual, bluesy sheet
music, and a slowly-gentrifying, inner-city quirófano, simultaneously.”
*
Lauren Espinoza reviews Richard Garcia’s
Rancho Notorious (Boa Editions,
2001).
Lauren Espinoza's poetry has
appeared in an anthology selected by Naomi Shihab Nye entitled Time You Let
Me In: 25 Poets Under 25, and, her fiction is online at “Label Me Latina,”
and she has work forthcoming in NewBorder:
Anthology. Her two poems “ruins” and “the llorona isn’t post-modern” are
currently featured in the November issue of The Acentos Review.
Lauren is also a frequent contributor at Ostrich
Review for the “Fifty Word Friday” series, which specializes in micro book
reviews.
Here is what Espinoza has to say
about Richard Garcia’s Rancho Notorious (Boa Editions, 2001):
“Oftentimes
in Rancho Notorious, a sustained image in one poem becomes reimagined
and repurposed in just the next piece over. A shark becomes a loan shark, and
Rancho Notorious is a hideout for poet bank robbers then the Western of its
namesake – all of this while preserving each poem’s gentleness.”
*
Peter
Ramos reviews Alejandro Escudé's Where Else but Here (March
Street Press, 2005)
One of the ways in which we like to revisit past
Letras Latinas collaborations like the now concluded Latino Poetry Review, is by highlighting particular interviews and
book reviews that although are now older, they easily lend themselves to be
highlighted in these “Review Roundups.” To that end I hope you enjoy this book
review by Peter Ramos that first appeared in issue 2 of Latino Poetry Review.
Here is what Ramos has to say:
“As
in John Chávez's Heterotopia
(also reviewed in this issue of LPR) tensions appear in Where Else but Here, Alejandro Escudé's impressive,
perfect–bound chapbook that includes an author photograph, as well as
dust–jacket blurbs from such critics as Sandra McPherson, Sandra Gilbert, and
Alan Williamson who praise Escudé for the subtlety and poignancy of his
formalist verse. And, indeed, Escudé makes admirable use of such forms as
iambic and trochaic meter as well as the sonnet—especially in the first poem,
"The Immigrant's Question," a long sequence made up of ten sonnet–sections.
"Argentina," the first section, is only thirteen lines long;
"Tango," the last, contains fifteen lines, attentively making up for
the lost fourteenth line in the first.”
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