Johnny Payne reviews Gabriel Gomez’s The Seed Bank (Mouthfeel Press)
In 2006 Gabriel Gomez’s The Outer Bands (University of Notre
Dame Press) was awarded the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Written shortly after
the devastating events of Hurricane Katrina, Gomez’s debut collection of poems
concludes with a title poem which sums up a chronicle of the twenty-eight-days
between Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita and which D.A. Powell called a
“kindness in the midst of a disordered world; a spire rising from the
floodwaters.” The Seed Bank is Gabriel
Gomez's newest collection of poems, here is what Johnny Payne of the El Paso Times had to say:
“This collection of lyrical
poems comes out of a self-conscious reflection on poetry-in-itself. With his
affable experimentation and subtle cultural vibe, Gómez allows us to enjoy a
refined mind with a deep sense of music. If you've ever felt mild euphoria
while listening to someone improvise on a guitar, you'll read this slim volume
in a single sitting. It's as much John Cale as John Cage.
"The Seed Bank"
consists mostly of interconnected poems, and in a sense, one could describe the
book as one long, if willfully fractured, poem -- "an isotropic / voice
split to its / frequencies." At the same time, each new poem, changing,
sometimes radically, from, say, spare typographic play to a numbered list,
springs on us a fresh surprise.”
*
Craig Santos Perez reviews
Paul Martinez Pompa’s My Kill Adore Him (Unviersity of Notre
Dame Press) Brenda Cárdenas’s Boomerang (Bilingual Press) and Kristin Naca's Bird Eating Bird (Harper Perennial)
Craig Santos Perez reminds
me that poetry, through its manipulation of the imagination, has the power to
move its readers and listeners to question and challenge established structures
of power. Take for instance the Arizona’s racist laws SB 1070 and HB 2281,
which together seek to erase any historical and linguistic marker which records
that state’s intimate connection with Mexicans, Mexican-Americans and native
communities. Perez also reminds me that just as poetry has the ability to
“speak truth to power,” the writing, study and appreciation of that type of
poetry is also just as vital an exercise in the fight for a more egalitarian
society:
Santos Perez on Andrés
Montoya Poetry Prize Winner, Paul
Martinez Pompa’s My Kill Adore Him as
a response to SB 1070:
Pompa’s “While Late
Capitalism” depicts the tragedy that often befalls those who cross the border in
search of better lives:
[Crammed-in-&-bangin-against-each-othr-in-a-dark-aluminum-box-they-drop-like-fleas-or-croak-standin-6-hrs-into-th-trip-a-mothr-drapes-her-limp-babys-serape-over-th-mans-head-it-nods-back-&-frth-with-each-bump-in-th-road-thank-god-th-corpse-doesnt-smell-warm-piss-&-shit-make-bodies-vomit-on-bodies-th-coyote-can’t-unlock-th-trailr-door-a-womn-tries-to-scratch-a-hole-thru-th-wall-as-she-prays-some-phrase-or-word-some-idea-that-resists-translation-into-Englsh]
(58)
Perhaps Pompa is referring
to the 19 migrants who, along with nearly 100 other people, died from heat
exhaustion after the trailer they were being smuggled in was abandoned and left
locked in the heat before it reached Houston in 2003. The poem embodies that
sense of confinement with its use of brackets; the hyphens further emphasize
the “crammed-in-&-bangin” rhythm. Even the truncated words (“th” and
“frth”) embody the crowdedness and aural stumbling of the “aluminum box.” These
formal elements powerfully contribute to the haunting image of the woman whose
scratching prayer eludes translation.
*
Santos Perez on Brenda Cárdena's code-switching and
multilingualism in Boomerang as a
response to HB 2281—Arizona’s English-only law:
Brenda
Cárdenas’ first book shows that multilingualism (and, by extension,
multilingual poetics) is beautiful, profound, engaging, and necessary. Her work also resists
pressure to write (or speak or live) “English-only.” The poem “Al mestizaje”
begins:
In mi
gente’s hips, la clave
and from mi gente’s lips, sale
a fluid, funky lingo fusion
that fools among you call intrusion,
but purity is an illusion.
So if you can’t dig la mezcla, ¡chale! (46)
and from mi gente’s lips, sale
a fluid, funky lingo fusion
that fools among you call intrusion,
but purity is an illusion.
So if you can’t dig la mezcla, ¡chale! (46)
*
Santos Perez on Kristin Naca's Bird Eating Bird and the banning of ethnic-studies in Arizona:
Moreover, Naca writes from
a multicultural perspective: she examines her Latina and Filipina heritage, as
she moves across the geographies of Mexico City, Pittsburgh, and the
Philippines.
The very first poem,
“Speaking English is Like,” offers several descriptions of what speaking
English is like for her: “The staple that misfires and jams the hammer”; “Red
water out the pipes, teeming from the rusty gutters”; “The ghostly cu-cu
echoing through the purple night, under stars.” (1-2) In her work, Naca
imaginatively engages with the experience of language acquisition and use,
showing us that learning multiple languages can give pleasure, even if it’s a
difficult (or even painful) process.
*
Lambda Literary reviews Blas Falconer's The
Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books)
Blas Falconer is the
author of The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012); A
Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007);
and The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio: A
Literary Press, 2006). He is also a co-editor for The Other Latin@:
Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and
Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois
University Press, 2010).
Here is a favorite excerpt
(from the poem “Homecoming”), which for me captures what Stanley Plumly calls
“the pastoral [as] the lyric of a landscape,” that joyous sound by which we
near home in the poems in Falconer latest collection The Foundling Wheel :
“Rain against the roof sounds like a slow tire
over gravel, as if a friend has come.
over gravel, as if a friend has come.
The train rumbles through the dark, and my body, tuned
to hear you cry before you cry, stirs.”
to hear you cry before you cry, stirs.”
Here is what Lambda had to
say:
The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books) is an apt title for this collection
of poems, which reflect the revolving emotions involved in cleaving to one’s
child or lover, as well as the emotions involved in being emotionally and
physically abandoned. Many of these poems touch upon the relationships between
two gay fathers and their infant son. There is a sense of absence in this
work and a resistance to “taking comfort/in routine,” meaning domestic routines
and the semi-rural landscape behind most of these poems. Certain darker
emotions reverberate under the surface—anger, resentment and in short, the
panoply of emotion that come with any relationship, gay or straight.
As a follow-up to his
first collection of poems, A Question of Gravity and
Light, Falconer continues his exploration of the domestic and the
heartfelt. The speaker tells us up front “You’ll test/yourself the way you
always have, a boy/stepping into the dark and the story/it held—whatever it
was.” This becomes an invocation of sorts, an exploration. In “On the
Bluffs of Pico Duarte” the poet takes a fool-hearty cliff-side plunge into “the
cold and muted dark, the stillness there” despite the fears and anxiety of his
lover who waits breathlessly above. But this in a way is metaphor for the poet
who always suspects “the emptiness below” who sees in the joyful scenes of pastoral
nature or in the confines of a long relationship the troubles and anger, which
lie, submerged, who resists the seductiveness of stillness and passivity.
