"US Latino poets en español": a midway pause.

Xánath Caraza

Back in February I posted a comment in which I provided some context for the creation of the Spanish-language column, “US Latino poets en español,” which appears in the online poetry journal, Periódico de Poesía, founded and directed by Mexican poet, Pedro Serrano.

We have reached the half-way mark in terms of the first year of the column—that is: five of the ten projected columns have been posted. I say “we,” but that’s something of a misnomer: the lion’s share of the credit goes to Xánath Caraza, who has actually been producing the column.  Credit for the concept belongs to Serrano who, as I mentioned in my post on February 11, went out of his way to attend two flagship Letras Latinas events  in DC over a year ago: installment 2 of Latino/a Poetry Now at Georgetown University, and an event at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

It was at these two aforementioned events that the project was pitched (by Serrano) and later sealed. Letras Latinas’ role, in the first year of the column, has been mostly “co-curatorial.” So, for those of you who can read Spanish and would like a flavor of how five of our poets look and sound en español, here are some pics and links, in reverse order:

No. 60/June-July 2013: Emma Trelles

No. 59/May 2013: Maurice Kilwein Guevara

No. 58/ April, 2013:  Brenda Cárdenas

No 57/March 2013: Maria Melendez

No. 56/February 2013: Tino Villanueva

*

The remaining poets to be translated and profiled

in 2013, in no particular order, are:
Raina J. León

Victor Hernández Cruz

Rigoberto González

John Murillo

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Sheryl Luna and Dan Vera, two Letras Latinas book prize winners, invite writers o dialogue

Sheryl Luna interviews 3 Latina Writers

Sheryl Luna

Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize winning author, Sheryl Luna moderates an interview for VIDA, the literary blog of the national literary organization Her Kind, and which features poets Carmen Giménez-Smith, Cynthia Cruz and short story writer Christine Granados, in conversation with one another.

Titled “Beyond the Folkloric,” this groundbreaking document provides a space for these three writers to engage in a conversation that brings a thoughtful and critical analysis of the literary critique (whether this be the existence or lack of one) and the general reception among publishers and supporters of the diverse body of literature currently being created by those writers who happen to be Latina.  Whether calling for more women and/or Latino/a writers to engage in the writing of literary criticism as Carmen Giménez-Smith does or in the need to engage in a critical “debate” that brings into question the old tropes of Latino/a literature in order to “unleash the [literary] potential” of our communities as Christine Granados’ does or whether it is a call to privilege one’s craft and writing as Cynthia Cruz does these three writers make clear their devotion to language and to craft and to the fact that men are not the only representative of minority voices.

            [Continue Reading.]

*

Dan Vera invites Xánath Caraza to take part in The Next Big Thing.

Dan Vera

Author of, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press, 2013) and winner of the inaugural Letras Latinas/ Red Hen Poetry Prize, Dan Vera recently took part in, and invited Xánath Caraza to take part in, the self-interview initiative, The Next Big Thing. Beside being the author of the recently released collection of poems Conjuro (Mammoth Publications, 2012) Xánath is also a translator and contributor to a regular column (co-sponsored by Letras Latinas) titled “U.S. Latino poets en español” at Periódico de Poesía—an ambitious, online magazine founded by Mexican poet Pedro Serrano—and which aims at introducing the work of U.S. Latino/a poets writing in English to a Spanish speaking audience. The inaugural column features the work in translation of Tino Villanueva, accompanied a small piece of literary commentary by Xánath Caraza.

Although Xánath’s work has been previously featured previously at this blog, in an interview and book review that explores the language and craft behind Xánath’s use of the ekphrastic poem, Dan Vera in this interview makes it clear that Xánath is also an accomplished fiction writer.

Anchored around her manuscript Lo que trae la marea / What the Tied Brings In due to be published in the Spring of 2013 by Mouthfeel Press, this interview explores Xánath’s preoccupation with the lack of female literary voices in past and present literatures. The short stories in Lo que se trae la marea are grounded in the feminine but also continue—as is evident from Xánath’s poetry—the author’s on-going interest with ekphrastic works of art and with the historical and political figures of Latin America.

            [Read her self-interview here.]

Review Roundup: September 30, 2012

Lonita Cook reviews Xanath Cáraza’s Conjuro

 A few weeks ago I had the privilege to profile Xánath in this interview for the Letras Latinas blog in which she discussed her early literary influences, growing up in Veracruz, Mexico –the land of bondage for the rebel Yanga—the influence of poet Louis Reyes Rivera on her poetry and a sneak peek into her newly released first book-length collection of poems Conjuro (Mammoth Publications). Of Conjuro, this is what Lonita Cook had to say:

 “‘Conjuro,’ is an educational text about living within the words, a spirit dancing as if by a voodoo call and existing as the flesh -- the terrain from which the language springs. In the 135 pages of poems, Caraza creates a scope, a space for movement as well as the instrument by which the movement is viewed.

The work is deeply feminine, traveling within hips and hands through thought and time, and because of it. Woman is color; memory is color; legacy is color.”

                  [Continue Reading]

*

Solid Quarter reviews Lucas de Lima’s GHOSTLINES

Born in Brazil and raised across the Americas, Lucas de Lima is a contributor to the multi-author blog Montevidayo.com and the author of the chapbook GHOSTLINES (radioactivemoat, 2012), an excerpt from that chapbook is currently featured at Culturestrike.

 De Lima writes in GHOSTLINES  “These poems mythify the alligator attack that killed my dearest friend in 2006. To write this book—to inscribe myself into its bloodstained ecology—I have to become a bird.” What does myth do to Ana Maria—the “dear friend” in these poems—what does it do to the speaker, to the alligator? In these transfigurations of man and woman, of bird and reptile the reader finds herself lost in a narrative that challenges the ways in which we conceive of our bodies and our relationship to those with the power to conceive the myths that transfix the bodily conditions of others.

Here is what Solid Quarter has to say:

I read Lucas De Lima's GHOSTLINES again evacuated from New Orleans while Hurricane Isaac made landfall and while the anniversary of Katrina on August 29th made specters of us all.

 I watched people in Plaquemines Parish being cut from their roofs as the water rose and trapped them. All time folds again and again. Water wants what it wants, and like any thing other than us: we can only imagine. The photo below was sent to me; this is someone's backyard made wild again. We live edged in and believe in borders that keep known from unknown, safe from danger. De Lima tells us that the poems in GHOSTLINES "mythify the alligator attack that killed my dearest friend in 2006."

What is a myth? What does it mean to make myths in this present splendor of reason and science? Isn't nature always making myths of us all?

                  

              [Continue Reading.]

 *

 Rigoberto González reviews Joy Castro’s Island of Bones

Joy Castro is an associate professor at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln and the author of The Truth Book: A Memoir (Arcade, 2005), the novel Hell or High Water (St. Martin's/Thomas Dunne, 2012. Her most recent is Island of Bones (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and which was recentely profiled in an interview by Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet, Rigoberto González for Critical Mass. Rigoberto González is slated to read—along with Xochiquetzal Candelari and Lorena Duarte—on October 10 at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Here is what Rigoberto González had to say:

Castro concludes: "For me, all the myths have come undone. I don't fit. I don't fit, and that's okay, and that's where I write from: that jagged, smashed place of edges and fragments, and grief, of feeling lost, of perilous freedoms." That disorientation is called the human condition; Castro's willingness to find her own path through writing (instead of remaining lost in history, memory and identity) is called a saving grace.

The essays in "Island of Bones" piece together an inspiring journey that challenges assumptions, statistics and long-held beliefs that shape the "public narrative" of a U.S. Latina. Indeed, through lives like Castro's, the public narrative expands to include stories of strength, perseverance and, apropos of the author's name, joy.

              [Continue Reading.]

Review Roundup: August 19, 2012

Julia Cohen reviews Carmen Giménez Smith’s The City She Was

Carmen Giménez Smith’s The City She Was (University of Colorado Press, 2011) is currently featured at Jacket 2 in a book review by Julia Cohen. Carmen Giménez Smith is a prolific poet and writer; she is the author of a memoir and four poetry collections. This last July, I had the pleasure and honor of meeting and hearing her work for the first time.  Of The City She Was, Julia Cohen writes:

“Disguises: Puppets, apartment ghosts, hair, and costumes embody and animate the emotional landscape of The City She Was. Giménez Smith investigates how much of the daily is artifice and whether deception and authenticity can simultaneously share space within this city.”

            [Continue Reading.]

*

Textual Matters Blog reviews Xánath Caraza’s Conjuro

A few weeks ago I had the privilege to profile Xánath in this interview for the Letras Latinas blog in which she discussed her early literary influences, growing up in Veracruz, Mexico –the land of bondage for the rebel Yanga—the influence of poet Louis Reyes Rivera on her poetry and a sneak peek into her newly released first book-length collection of poems Conjuro (Mammoth Publications). Of Conjuro, this is what Textual Matters had to say:

“Xánath Caraza’s “Conjuro” is a textural salsa of clashing and dazzling cultures, languages, histories and ancestral memories assembled through poetry, organized in bilingual pairings, mainly in English/Spanish, yet with embellishments of Nahuatl and other non-European tongues that lend her painting-like compositions a dimension all their own, invoking themes of diaspora, sensuality, the subconscious, nativism, mysticism, mythology, and fantasy.”

            [Continue Reading.]

*

Rigoberto González reviews Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning

Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning is reviewed by Rigoberto González—also a Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet who is slated to read (along with Xochiquetzal Candelaria and Lorena Duarte) on October 10 at the campus of Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Rigoberto González starts his review of Slow Lighting with this: “Eduardo Corral is the first Latino to win the Yale Series of Younger Poets award in its 106-year history.” A fitting sentence to encapsulates the complexities of what it mean to be a U.S. Latino/a in the current present and goes hand in hand with Rigoberto González’s review of Rudolfo Anaya’s classic novel Bless Me, Ultima and which commemorates the 40^th anniversary of the publishing of that novel and the release of its film adaptation. The film adaptation of this too once-banned classic of Chicano literature and the recognition of Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning  are bonfire-fires burning against the political forces that seek to make the presence of Latino/as invisible. As Rigoberto said:

“Corral presents a unique vision of the day laborers and kitchen workers who once "slipped through a fence like mice," who trekked "three days in the desert & [were] still too close to Mexico." They are people fueled by their creativity and imagination, who thrive with humor, resilience and, when necessary, defiance.”

            [Continue Reading.]

Latin@ Featured Poets

Carmen Giménez-Smith @ Ostrich Review

Carmen Giménez-Smith is a CantoMundo fellow. She is the author of a memoir and three poetry collections: The City She Was, Odalisque in Pieces, and Goodbye Flicker for which she was awarded the Juniper Prize for Poetry.  A Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet, Carmen Giménez Smith is slated to read—along with poets J. Michael Martinez and Roberto Tejada—at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center for the penultimate reading of this national series. She is currently featured at issue 1 of the Ostrich Review, an online literary journal edited by Nayelly Barrios (with excellent artwork).

Carmen’s poem is titled “Are My Fingers Comb.” What I particularly enjoy about reading a poem is that feeling of being stunned by a particular image or sound and wanting to simply remain in that moment of discovery. Here are a few such lines from “Are My Fingers Comb:”

“is the freckle of my nose     the dimmest grief”

“Are my taste buds each                              tiny current    and are the drums

in my ears           is my body          any currency        worth trading”

                [Continue Reading.]

*

Xánath Caraza @ Kritya

Xánath Caraza who was recently profiled in this book review and interview for the Letras Latinas Blog is currently featured with four poems at the international journal of poetry, Kritya.  Caraza is author of the chapbook Corazon Pintado and the book-length collection Conjuro (Mammoth Publications) due to be released in September of this year. Conjuro  or “spellbound” in English (with an introduction by Fred Arroyo) is a trilingual collection of poems written in Spanish, English, and Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs) and which the poet weaves together to create “a continues spell of verse.” Of the four poems featured in Kritya, “Copalilllo,” an ekphrastic  poem, captures Caraza’a ability to capture what Rigoberto González called the  “wisdom from the natural and experiential landscapes, the oral traditions of the heart.”

                [Continue Reading.]

*

Eduardo C. Corral @ Undertow Magazine

CantoMundo Fellow and Latino/a Poetry Now Featured Poet, Eduardo C. Corral is also the 2011 recipient of the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. His poem “Saint Anthony’s Church” (along with a nice and meditative note on Eduardo’s poems and what they do to the spaces and people that inhabit them) is currently featured at Undertow Magazine. From the head note: “The poems… hold beautiful imagery that’s somehow quiet and also rough, meditating on the ideas of the spaces people embody and the feelings of distance and estrangement between people and spaces (or spaces and other spaces).”

                [Continue Reading.]

*

María Meléndez @ La Bloga

Amelia María de la Luz Montes profiles María Meléndez at La Bloga and her poem “Why Can’t We All Get Along.” Amelia María de la Luz Montes writes a compelling headnote in which she discusses the media’s failure to capture a compelling form of the imagination and language that truly communicates the injustices of our days: We may be presented with statistical sums and other “fair and balanced” opinions but we can never imagine them.  It is because of this failure of language and the need to restore the affection that is born of imaginative experiences (like reading poems) that poets like Meléndez are needed. Her poems “open up familiar terrains in ways one may never have considered before—in poignant and searing language. “Meléndez,  a Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet, is also slated to read in the fall of 2013 at the final installment of Latino/a Poetry Now on the campus of Notre Dame.

                [Continue Reading.]