New and Selected Poems<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\nHardcover, 978-0-87565-689-2, 96 pp.,\u00a0 $19.95<\/p>\n
Texas A&M University Press<\/p>\n
TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series<\/p>\n
June 15, 2018<\/p>\n
Reviewed by Natalia Trevi\u00f1o<\/p>\n
The first burst of delicacies in Carmen Tafolla\u2019s<\/span> New and Selected Poems.<\/span> A tribute to her accomplishments, roots, and activism by Bryce Milligan.<\/span> The sweets that waterfall out? Eclectic, sensuous, and unabashed poetics of a fierce Chicana.<\/p>\nAs I read this collection, I was reminded how fortunate I am to live in the city whose praises she frequently sings and whose sorrows and injustices she laments. This is one of the bright pi\u00f1atas in this book for San Antonio readers, but the big prize goes to a much wider population. Needed in a time filled with such negative rhetoric about immigrants and Mexicans, this book feeds its readers pride in their cultura,<\/span> in its Indigenous wisdom from the voice of a nurturer-mother Earth: \u201cI have squeezed cilantro into the breast milk\/ made sure you were nurtured with the taste \/ of green life.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cSassy as salsa,\u201d this books teaches that we can \u201csashay\u201d as we \u201csizzle on the streets,\u201d offering an alternative to the narrative of despair and inferiority that is often sold to the world about Indigenous peoples, Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans. Reminding me of Zora Neale Hurston<\/span> in its joy and celebration in representing the wholeness of her culture, Tafolla honors la gente, los viejitos, las viejitas, la curandera,<\/span> as the \u201cstorykeepers\u201d who are pushed aside. \u201cLook in the jarros.<\/span> \/ The ones forgotten or shoved aside,\u201d she says, in a poem subtitled \u201cInstructions from a historian.\u201d Pride sings too, in the music of a third language born in Texas, Tex-Mex: \u201cBut even then I loved the octopus arms of my mother language, \/Tex-Mex, \/\/ to be deste lado y dese lado.\u201d<\/p>\nDivided into six sections that span almost five decades (six full-length collections), it begins with \u201cNew Poems,\u201d a series of elegiac lyrics that explore a range of painful memories with an eye to wholeness and healing. Acknowledging the paradox that transcends breast cancer and the recent loss of \u201cthe one who brung me,\u201d her beloved husband, we enter grief tempered by love: \u201cyes, even the scars\/change, soften, stretch and curve to fit\/together.\u201d<\/p>\n
These new poems pick up a thread that shimmers in earlier works: the primordial voice and unmistakable presence of the Earth Mother: \u201cI hear the earth softwhisper \/ Soy tu Madre, Mi\u2019ja.\u201d<\/span> Like a turquoise thread woven into a colorful rebozo, with its wise suspiros<\/span>, the goddess assists the reader to face los problemas:<\/span> poverty, hunger, death, and racism with an alternative healing force: \u201cThis river here is full of me and mine \/\/ washing clean our memories, baptizing our hearts\/ gathering past and present.\u201d But this giving Earth-Mother is not shut away or romantically idealized, but alive, vulnerable, and palpable, a victim of horrid crime: \u201cthe planet herself. . . \/ torn from her organs \/ Womb and lungs and colon bleeding,\u201d a Coyolxuaqui figure indeed, \u201cas the violator curses, \/under his money-drunk breath, \/ Frack You!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/span><\/p>\n
Unabashed and lyrical, this political and personal book does not lie. Nor is it bathed in cynicism, but a much stronger force: love.<\/p>\n
* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
POETRY Carmen Tafolla, edited by Bryce Milligan New and Selected Poems Hardcover, 978-0-87565-689-2, 96 pp.,\u00a0 $19.95 Texas A&M University Press…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonestar.a1professionals.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}