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Poetry
Vélez escribe sin ojo ni oreja, enfocándose en la angustia política y quizás en ganar lectores que simplemente sienten esa misma angustia. Solamente un poema (“Angeles”) me movio. Los demás no tienen suficientes imágenes o música para que sean memorables. Las traducciones de algún modo son peores que estos poemas. 1 out of 5.
In 2024, does your house have lions by Sonia Sanchez was one of my favorite reads. Shake Loose Your Skin is my first deep dive into Sanchez’s work and it provided a curious snapshot into her legend. does your house have lions? is likely the apex of her career, as she has only published one book after this new and selected, and the poems from dyhhl were by far was the best part of the new and selected. In content, many of the poems and essays in this collection grapple with gendered violence and surviving toxic masculinity in intimate relationships. Sanchez details the pain of adultery and addiction repeatedly in a confessional and heartbreaking voice with little literary stunting. Reading Shake Loose Your Skin made me feel the same way I did after catching up with a homegirl after far too long and too much has happened. I was pleasantly surprised to find a long poem dedicated to Tupac Shakur. Giovanni had a poem for Tupac too and it makes me happy knowing all the dope Black women were writing poems for him. 3 out of 5.
Constante Hida / Manuel Tzoc / 2016
My friend brought me back Constante Huida by Manuel Tzoc back from Guatemala this past fall. I've been itching to read their work for years and was so grateful! Tzoc is a monumental queer Maya writer from Guatemala, one of the first voices you’ll have recommended to you when you ask. That said, I’m not sure if this is the collection by which to get to know Tzoc’s work. Most of the collection is a well-crafted irreverent queer ennui diatribe. While Tzoc sprinkles the collection with playful puns and eye-catching images here and there, there are one too many poems bemoaning the challenges of writing for me to understand where all the pomp was coming from. There are definitely glimpses of real pathos on the page, such as “por el día/por los días.” Either way, I’m glad to have read it and will be seeking out more of his work. 2 out 5
[...] / Fady Joudah / 2024
I would highly recommend reading […] in a book club or group. Being a Palestinian writer in 2024 means the genocide and your familiar struggles being thrust into the spotlight like never before, alongside all the political baggage and expectations that come with such a moment. Here, Joudah resists becoming a sole spokesperson, someone who sentimentalizes or serves as a catalyst for catharsis. Inevitably, this has created a collection that can be hard to parse on your own at times. There’s a resistance in the silences here, in the naming of so many poems as […] in a way that makes some of the poems harder to remember, much in the same way the onslaught of death and the faces and the dismembered body parts on our screen become lost to actual memory. It was reading these poems in conversation with peers that really made their brilliance shine through for me. i had the blessing of having a Palestinian woman in the room during my book club who could speak to how certain poems evoke a specific set of war memories for her. I particularly adored the maqams in this collection. I recommend folks to listen to Joudah read “Dedication”—what I would argue is the most “accessible” poem in the collection and the sort of poem people expected and wanted from Palestinian poets this year. Joudah reads it with a rhythm and energy practically foreign to the loud, slammy US circuit for poems like these. 4.5/5
Bluff / Danez Smith / 2024
Danez Smith been one of my favorite poets. In Bluff, they reflect on their meteoric rise and the tokenism that they tried and feels they failed to resist. In some of their best poems yet, they criticize the “hope industrial complex” and feel embarrassed about having written poems for presidents. I laughed out loud at the line “they untapped my phone / found no threat, the shame i felt.” Despite this, Electric Literature still insists Smith “Sculpts Pessimism into Hope”, which isn’t exactly wrong but feels like it misses the critique, as if readers can’t stomach the Afropessimism intrinsic in the project. I can’t say I’m well-read in Afro-pessimism, but as a neophyte to Marxism, I did feel disappointed in Smith’s inability to articulate much of a vision throughout the collection. The poem “principles” is particularly underwhelming: it argues against “all lives matter” as if Smith is trapped in some racist white woman’s facebook page; it puts its most radical position--a desire for a stateless society--into parentheticals, not giving it much space to breathe and develop meaningfully. No doubt Smith’s life as a poz nonbinary Black artist has not been an easy one, but still, Smith has been granted lots of money and time and connections to develop their ideas and be heard, so it’s a bit disappointing to read poems from a dude in their 30s still writing about “three soulmates” that they lost. The essay “My End of the World” about BIPOC relationships to nature, for example, merely seemed to catalog introductory talking points of Black and brown environmental thought. The highs in Bluff are great, but Danez sets a high bar for themself and at times I feel like they gets lost in the sauce, flinching when they could choose to grow into new territory.
Más allá de la aureola marrón y núbil / Lauri Garcia Duenas / 2024
Más allá de la aureola marrón y núbil is an afternoon and evening spent with your sweet and timeworn tia, gracious in her wisdom and resplendent in her power. “Quiero sanar pero eso implicaría estar enferma / y no lo estoy / ni lo estuve,” she says with her whole chest in the opening poem. Alexandra Regalado translates it as “I want to heal but that implies being sick / and I am not/ nor was I ever.” The bitter ex club listening to Rebeca Lane’s latest project with Audry Funk will enjoy Lauri’s curses for her betrayer, but what I love about Lauri’s approach is that rather than vengefully lashing out, she has truly found her center; her curses come from a place of conviction rather than fantasy, creating a voice that feels less like a chest-thumping bitter ex and more believable: “no hay odio ni rencor en la aureola marrón y núbil / sólo leche para mi segundo vástago” or in translation: “There is no hate or resentment in the nubile brown areola / only milk for my second child.” This collection was a hug when I needed it. 4.5/5
Soledades / Sol Quetzalli / 2024
Sol Quetzalli is a Salvadoran poet and professor of literature who I traded books with in Chiquimula. Her chapbook Soledades captures grief and absence and cages it in iron bars like a haunted loro. You can find her read from the collection during Slam Quetzal here, where she took first place with a voice trembling with emotions. Her work reminds me of Cynthia Guardado at her finest, only in Spanish. The poems here grieve the death of her mother, the rampant murders, and the loss of innocence of a dystopian Salvador drenched in blood. 4 out 5
Dialect of Distant Harbors / Dipika Mukherjee / 2022
Despite a pen trained in craft, Mukherjee’s writing fails to find its rhythm in this collection. I had Anushka read a couple of poems to make sure I wasn’t just untrained in picking up the rhythms of a more Indian English, and she couldn’t make it through them. While Mukherjee picks complex material, she doesn’t have enough of a vision to say anything too profound about them in this collection. I read on despite Anushka’s suggestion that my time was better spent elsewhere. 1.5/5
Entre los brazos de la neblina / Mariela Tax / 2023
These plainspoken poems thread the realities of one contemporary Maya woman. The poems narrate cultural connection and loss, clap back against racism, linger on haunting mountainous landscapes, and cut through the fog with a clear sweet light in her voice. I found many 5/5 poems in this collection with my favorites being the punchier, longer poems like “la evolucion de mis pasos.” 3 / 5
Casa / Efraín Caravantes / 2021
This short collection will slink through your consciousness with the meditative deftness of The Four Quartets. It’s wild to see Efra capture that energy in a taut and delicate Spanish whose surprising turns open up pockets in your mind and soul. The untitled poems all flow into one another, each one like a wave in a bigger ocean, and like an ocean, there’s a peace I find spending time with these poems and the way their beauty transforms massages the bitterness out of grief. 5/5
Peces en mi boca / Elena Salamanca / 2011
I’ve been a longtime fan of Elena’s work, so I was thrilled when Marcos Valerio Reyes Cisfuentes gifted me her first book in Guatemala this summer. Peces en mi boca is an explosive series of feminist poems, exploring desire and agency in ways that are equally fiery and fun. I will forever cherish the young, feisty voice in this collection. 5/5
Equatorial / Soleil David / 2024
I read this book feverish during parent-teacher conferences in between sessions with teachers. Soleil’s voice is simultaneously impressive and the opposite of ostentatious. She captures the fury of monsoons in a delicate voice. There’s a way her rhythm washes over me that I haven’t quite figured out. Masterful poems like “Last Transit of Venus…”, a golden shovel flipping a classic Margaret Atwood poem, take me several reads to sink into its absolute splash of longing. I would reread and reread without any regrets. 3.5/5
Against Heaven / Kemi Alabi / 2022
Against Heaven rekindled my love for poetry and inspired me to read more poetry after months of dragging my feet on some titles. It did so by its delectable combination of pin-like precision in form (the flawless double golden shovels, oh my) and the bubbling energy of its voice. Kemi inhabits a meditative and grounded eros that cohabitates with grief in a very present mundane way. Yes, there's some healing, but it's the way scarring is healing, the way taking the time to be present and truly curious about grief can make it blossom into something deeper and soulful. 4.5/5
Golden Ax / Rio Cortez / 2022
I'm kicking myself for not reading Rio Cortez sooner and am somewhat stunned we never crossed paths as young poets of color in Utah. Golden Ax forges a rooted Black identity in Utah in a way that feels deeply familiar in the odd and only way Utah is familiar. Golden Ax is an eco-poetics that feels dramatically different than most of what I've read of Utah environmental writing. Perhaps it's in Cortez’s willingness to embrace her historic relationship to the land, to find joy and connection to it in a way that doesn't at all feel romantic of the past, present, or future, or perhaps as viscerally angry or stormy as me or most other writers of color who I’ve happened to read. Golden Ax is a Black feminist counterpoint to (slave) master narratives of Utah and nods to Brigham Young and Sun-Ra, the Broad Ax, and other historic touchpoints to elbow her way into a fully realized Utah Blackness. The poems are full-bodied, lyrical, and thoughtful in a way that made me feel like I just had an amazing dinner convo with Rio, complete with music recommendations, Utah upbringing stories, and soulful contemplation of our racial and environmental predicaments. 4/5
Quiet Fire: A Historical Anthology of Asian American Poetry, 1892-1970 / Edited by Juliana Chang / 1996
I feel blessed to hold this book in my hands and to have encountered its voices, many of whom have faded from popular literary memory. Quiet Fire is a treasure trove of Asian American poets, including H. T. Tsiang (a fiery leftist poet who would’ve crushed any slam and who was imprisoned on Ellis Island), Carlos Bulosan (a Filipino, the earliest undocupoet I’m aware of), and Toye Suyemoto (a Japanese woman incarcerated in Topaz, Utah). Each of the voices rattled me with their imagery, the range and prowess of their styles. There is a whole generation, a canon here, with many poems left to explore. 5/5
Vamos Patria a Caminar / Otto Rene Castillo / 1965
I’ve been searching for a book by Otto Rene Castillo for years, so I was thrilled when I found a copy of Vamos Patria a Caminar en La Teca during my trip to Guate. This collection is full of love and heartbreak poems, as well as patriotic, revolutionary leftist poetry. The love here blends and blurs nationalism and romantic love, a tradition familiar to anyone who has read the kundimans of the Phillipines (via Patrick Rosal esp). There’s very many 10/10 poems in this collection. Occasionally, the collection lapses into the typical snares of masculinist love poetry. The patriotic nationalism and idealism hasn’t aged well either, as the revolutionary potential of postcolonial nation-states has slowly faded into a dystopia in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America. Still, it’s easy to see why Otto was so beloved by the revolutionary left in Central America with these passionate, pulsating poems dreaming of a better future in Guate and TLC. 4/5
En Carne Propia / Jorge Argueta / 2017
Known best for his bilingual poetry picture books for children, Jorge Argueta is also a formidable poet and a leader, not just among US-based Salvadoran authors of his generation, but of Latino literature and US lit at large. His latest offering is a memoir version of his life, written in clear, cutting short lined verse. This book felt like a blessed opportunity to sit at an elders feet and listen to him narrate his life in broad strokes, zooming in on moments of emotional intensity. The balance of memoir, poetry, and clarity masterfully manages to create a sense of vulnerability without exposing the personal to the public. This is an incredibly adept move, especially considering the wave of tell-all sensationalism that many artists engage in these days, trying to out-bleed one another in stages and pages. I'll most cherish Argueta's descriptions of finding healing in Native ceremony for his alcoholism and his reconnecting of his Nawat roots. I hope scholars, Salvadoran literati, and Latino lit takes his work more seriously in the upcoming decades. 4/5
Revólver/ Josué Andrés Moz / 2024
Moz outdid himself here, his words cutting with broken hearted clarity into the political turmoil of Bukele’s Salvador. Written in a language just as rich and calculated as his early work, Moz’s articulation of his griefs and passions find subjects worthy of its dramatic flair. With criticisms to the political buffoonery of some of his peers, as well as heartfelt poems about unfulfilled desire, Moz butts his head against the worst of our era and gives it a deserving language. 4/5
Does Your House Have Lions / Sonia Sanchez / 1997
A hypnotic song of grief, love, and loss, DYHHL will heat your heart the same way a sad earworm of a tune will wreck you no matter when and where you hear it. Sanchez delivers a rhyming blues with a mastery and charge worthy of her reputation. 4.5/5
O, Body / Dan “Sully” Sullivan / 2024
I somehow ended up at the Green MIll Poetry Slam last Sunday, the original poetry slam hosted by Marc Smith, and lo and behold, a long lost friend Sully was featuring. It was a joy to see him in his element, getting ruckus with an audience for tender poems about fatphobia, family, and Chicago. I wouldn’t reduce the poems in O, Body to tavern poems, however. What’s awesome about the range of Sully’s craft is the same poem that might be a real loud one on stage can also be a sweet, gentle one on the page. O, Body offers a rich field to folks interested in writing about fat and masculinity. The poems slide between moments of insecurity and moments of deep presence within the body. In O, Body, Sully wields craft without taking himself too seriously, sidestepping the main character syndrome of so much contemporary poetics for poems that focus on family and the home we create for ourselves. In this way, Sully helps me laugh, not take myself so damn seriously, and focus on things that matter most. 4 out 5.