Cenzontle (A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America)

by Brenda Shaughnessy (Foreword), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (Author), Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (Author), Brenda Shaughnessy (Foreword)

New
Paperback
2018
$13.14

In this highly lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. These poems explore the emotional fallout of immigration, the illusion of the American dream via the fallacy of the nuclear family, the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage, and the ongoing search for belonging. Finding solace in the resignation to sheer possibility, these poems challenge us to question the potential ways in which two people can interact, love, give birth, and mourn--sometimes all at once.

Synopsis

In this highly lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. These poems explore the emotional fallout of immigration, the illusion of the American dream via the fallacy of the nuclear family, the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage, and the ongoing search for belonging. Finding solace in the resignation to sheer possibility, these poems challenge us to question the potential ways in which two people can interact, love, give birth, and mourn--sometimes all at once.

$13.14

Quantity

17 in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 112
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
Published: 26 Apr 2018
ISBN 10: 1942683537
ISBN 13: 9781942683537

Media Reviews

In the collection, which takes its title from the Spanish word for birdsong, to sing of one's undocumented life is to risk being consumed by it: 'The song becoming / the bird becoming / the song, ' the poet writes. 'The bird unraveled its song and became undone.' And yet, in the collection's first poem, the desire to tell the story is also inescapable. --The Paris Review

Castillo resists resignation to silence; his poems embody a belief in art's transformative ability. Lush musicality renders agricultural labor, corporeal punishment, and romantic difficulties beautiful. Forged in Keatsian negative capability, Castillo's poetics often involve finding the description that will lift the painful or unjust into music. --Publishers Weekly--Tara Wanda Merrigan The Paris Review

Author Bio

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of five through the mountains of Tijuana. He is a CantoMundo Fellow and earned degrees from Sacramento State University and The University of Michigan, where he was the first undocumented student to graduate from the MFA program in Creative Writing. He has received fellowships to attend the Vermont Studio Center, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. He cofounded the Undocupoets campaign, which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country, and he was recognized with the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers. His work has been adapted to opera through collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya. With the late C. D. Wright, he co-translated the poems of the contemporary Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in PBS NewsHour, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, Fusion TV, and BuzzFeed, among others. He lives in California where he teaches at Sacramento State University.