Piñata theory / Alan Chazaro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chazaro, Alan, author.

Contributor:

Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American poetry--21st century.

American poetry.

American poetry--Mexican American authors.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

86 pages : portrait ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

[New York, NY] : Black Lawrence Press, 2020.

Summary:

Poetry. Latinx Studies. "Cante Jundo, or 'Deep Song,' is what Garcia Lorca called poetry attached to the rhythms and waves of a continent, its people, its waters, its history. In Alan Chazaro's PIÑATA THEORY, those resonances echo across the field 'between the countries of your body,' the shared stories of cousin-cultures stretching across manmade boundaries. 'I've become a borderland of tongues,' writes Chazaro, 'a mezcla of eyes.' Here is the piñata, unbroken, containing, holding together all the promise of youth and imagination. When it spills, it spills lavishly and generously its treasures."--D A Powell "The great American philosopher Jay Z once said, 'You can't heal / what you don't reveal.' Such is the ethos of this debut collection. Pugilistic, unflinchingly honest, and damn right gorgeous, PIÑATA THEORY no se raja in decirnos how broken we are, how broken we've been. Alan takes the hyphen in Mexican-American, this unruly papier-mache we've inherited, and clothes the hollow of us. So before leafing this book, dear reader, take a breath--for your sake, for those who still can't breathe. Stomach his hard-hitting truth, because 'We were made for beatdowns.' This some strong shit, as blunt as a spliffed Swisher, as the dusty 2x4's we'd wield at dangling dulce. Whenever you ready, step inside this circle of homies. We're cheering on our Yay Area champ as he plants both feet in this poetry world. It's his turn. And as he swings for our freedom, sing like we did as kids, 'Dale dale dale, no pierdas el tino.'"--Antonio López "We don't get to witness a root as it reaches out and absorbs from all around itself. But PIÑATA THEORY by Alan Chazaro is evidence of this Mexican-American navigation--it is the bud and the strange blossom that doesn't resist itself like Xicanos sometimes do. And in this way, it is like the serious ache a family joke leaves. It's the men watching other men cry, lost gold teeth and the person that misses it, the thoughts loose like dogs on the street and how in their wildness, we must honor them. These poems reverb under the skin but not necessarily in the colonized body. The speaker in this collection knows better than to make their body fully responsible for the world. And yet, they know where they participate. They don't 'live with dust in [their] eyes,' or with unaccounted admiration for life. PIÑATA THEORY is a record of layer, and speaks of us in a humor that is pure pocho-dimensional. Its truth is a deep wound and the 'fuck it' that follows. And still, each poem seems to be written in a special wonder that gathers itself from many places inside the speaker's one body, one root."--Sara Borjas

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Body

Translations from the Backseat of a Colectivo in Oaxaca

Reading Autobiographies

Some of Our Boyhoods

Speech Cantos

A Poem While Wearing Jason Kidds

A Millennial Walks into a Bar and Says

Self-Portrait as American

Broken Sestina as Soundscape

Ode to Kendrick Lamar

These Hours Are So Colored and Wasteful

How to Watch Mexico vs. U.S. A Soccer with a Father Who Is More Referee than Coach

Lesson on Manhood

Julio Cesar Chavez vs. Oscar De La Hoya, 1996

Californiacantofunk

Backyard Boxing

Bricks

Pretty

Litany, Ending with Night

Pinata Theory

Break

Thow Away the Cowboy Shirts

Glitch

Google Searching Mexico

An Inventory of Cultural Fragments

Lucha Libre, in Two and 1/2 Parts

Veracruz.

Notes:

Poems.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Laura Jan Meyerson Poetry Fund.

ISBN:

1625578202

9781625578204

OCLC:

1182846941

Publisher Number:

99986138775