Wine-sipping syllables, a communion of bones, impetuous pinches of chile, and parrot-sassy guacamole.
With a mélange of aromas and tastes, colors and sounds, award-winning poet Pat Mora
Pat Mora's sensuous lyricism makes a special contribution to the strong and varied literature emerging from Mexican American culture in recent years. She is of those tejana poets I admire.
--Denise Levertov
|
|
invites readers into her home in this new collection of forty-nine odes. Inspired by Pablo Neruda's Odas Elemantales and reinvented with a Latina identity, Mora celebrates the ordinary in
lyrics that are anything but. Her poetry is the poetry of space—house patterns and adobe constructions—and the human rhythms that happen inside. It is also the poetry of what she
loves—chocolate, books, dandelions, church bells, hope, courage, and even rain. Thick with the microcultures of foodstuffs, family, places, regions, deities, spirits, and literary figures, Mora's
adobe universe is luscious and tactile, elemental and dynamic.
From family gossip and beauty secrets, to women darning hand-me-downs, to reluctant hands carrying bodies across borders,
Mora traverses the tangled threads of culture, community, family, gender, and injustice. Her vivid observations together with her deft handling of symmetry and meter make her poetry uniquely
insightful, subtle, and elegant.
Sprinkled with Spanish and plenty of spice, each ode is a sensory flurry of mind and body. Together they make a cauldron of flavorful, simmering language.
They are meant to be savored as they slowly stir the soul.
|
