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On Tuesday, when the homeless disappeared : poems / by Marcos McPeek Villatoro.
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View onlineVan Pelt Library PS3572.I386 O5 2004
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- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Villatoro, Marcos McPeek.
- Series:
- Camino del sol
- Language:
- English
- Spanish
- Subjects (All):
- Hispanic Americans--Poetry.
- Hispanic Americans.
- Appalachian Region.
- Appalachian Region--Poetry.
- Genre:
- Poetry.
- Penn Provenance:
- Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)
- Physical Description:
- viii, 88 pages ; 23 cm.
- Place of Publication:
- Tucson : University of Arizona Press, [2004]
- Summary:
- Marcos McPeek Villatoro is not afraid to discuss mysteries, truths, or injustices. He has lived them. Poet and novelist, activist and radio personality, Villatoro writes poetry steeped in formalism, free verse, and his own Salvadoran syntax. This new collection is a memoir-in-poems telling how the world appears to a Latin American immigrant. His sense of humanity is intact. He has a family, a job, a life in the States. But the face of the Mayan hero Tekun Uman hangs in his office, and he has "made clear all political positions by standing behind the wooden mask of a dead man." Villatoro is a writer with a keen political sensibility and a sense of humor besides. After confronting the reader with weighty issues, he pauses to have an encounter with a curandera in a cornfield; to speculate on a visit from extraterrestrials; and to pay tribute to his free-spirited, loose-living Uncle Jack, who "chewed forest mushrooms like a rabbit, / Then howled at a California night / While whispering querida above open thighs." Combining Borgean logic, the grit of Neruda, and a heady dose of Zen, Villatoro offers a primer on how to integrate a history of brutality and injustice with the privilege and comfort of life in America. A final section of poems is presented in Spanish only -- a statement of ascendance, a strategy for identity preservation, a gift to the cognoscenti. Reading On Tuesday, When the Homeless Disappeared may make you shift in your seat -- perhaps even toss in your sleep -- as you encounter a poignant human voice that is unafraid to speak from the heart.
- Contents:
- Que seas razonable, cabron 1
- False Memory 3
- Interpretation 5
- On Tuesday, When the Homeless Disappeared 7
- The Odor 9
- Mask 11
- Zazen Interruptus 13
- Meditation 15
- To Enku 17
- The Familiar 19
- The Deer 21
- El Salvador, 1932-1981 25
- The Scold 29
- The Holy Spirit of My Uncle's Cojones 31
- The Snow 35
- Mother 37
- Skull Against the World 39
- The Cough 41
- Gotcha 43
- In the Hotel Room 45
- The Message 47
- The Landlady 49
- The Elders 51
- The Plan 57
- Mnemotics 59
- Entablar 61
- La hija 63
- Su pierna 65
- Vera Cruz, Mexico 67
- Fabiola 69
- Sin titulo 71
- Oda a Selena 73
- Sobreviviendo en Iowa 75
- La pinata 77
- Oda a Derrida 79
- La caceria 81
- El bisturi 83
- Oda al catarro 85
- End It 87.
- ISBN:
- 0816523908
- OCLC:
- 54454767
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