Jose Angel Araguz's Blog, page 4

microreview: Songs For Wo​(​Men) 2 by Mugabi Byenkya

review by José Angel Araguz

A photo of Mugabi’s mixtape as a cassette outside of its case.

[CW: talk of suicide]

One of the gifts of lyric poetry is the way that it can hold space for a full range of truths as well as ways to access understandings of truth. I often tell writers that what we are after is awkward human utterance. This can be interpreted both as craft as well as content. Figuring out what needs to be said as well as how it needs to be said–this is the gift and animation of engaging with poetry and its truths.

These thoughts are on my mind after spending time with the digital album Songs For Wo​(​Men) 2 (Hello America Stereo Cassette) by Mugabi Byenkya. This album’s narrative arc centers the experiences of a disabled body navigating an able-bodied world as well as the themes of intimacy and love and their role in survival. What charges through the listening experience is Byenkya’s lyric sensibility.

The opening to “Tina,” for example, sets a scene deftly then quickly makes clear what the stakes are:

Housekeeping keeps knocking on the door telling me to open up. I sit and listen. I’m the reason that the towel rack lies mangled askew on the chalky linoleum floor, wondering how much this is going to rack up in charges, wracking my mind for a convincing enough excuse, because I had a seizure while getting out of the shower is a little too much truth, a little too much awkward silence, a little too much shifty eyes, a little too much tiptoeing past the room but barging in when the fork clatters to the ground, a little too much.

The scene here depicts the liminal space of having to negotiate around vulnerability. The physical vulnerability of the moment runs parallel with the emotional vulnerability behind the speaker’s voice. Reading the words alone makes clear the mind at work; the wordplay of “open up” can be appreciated and lingered over in text, such a poignant note to hit before moving forward. Listening to Byenkya’s voice behind words, however, adds a further dimension, makes clear exactly the “opening up” to come.

The idea present in the phrasing “a little too much truth” lives at the core of this album. Byenkya’s awareness and ability to evoke for listeners moments of “a little too much truth” is a gift to watch in action. The track “Professor Poopy Pants” shows how this kind of truth can be accessed through humor:

No doctorate. But my pants are poopy. Did I just poop in my pants? Absolutely. There’s no fade to black like a scene in a movie cuz I just pooped my pants and that’s a major oopsies. You might be chuckling and wondering how I could get to the point where I poop in my pants while asleep; you won’t be chuckling when you discern that it’s due to me suffering from three strokes by the time I turn 23. At the time life was so stressful and depressing that pooping my pants was honestly a relief. For I went to bed most nights wishing for death, but that morning I woke up to some comic relief.

When listening to the track, Byenkya’s performance takes centerstage. He delivers the above lines with a swagger and play at first, only to ground that swagger in a tone of conviction as the lines move from play to the truth of the scene. This switch in tone occurs in text via word choice, as can be seen midway in this excerpt when the speaker moves from “poop” to “discern” midway, the physical language shifting to language of the mind.

More than analysis, this mixtape invites introspection, the speaker waxing through intimate raw recollections, sharing them with the listener in ways that spark insights. The blunt and direct statements throughout stand in stark contrast with the emotional tenor in which they are delivered:

My first thought upon waking up is suicide; my last thought before drifting off to sleep is suicide. I’m not often this frank about my suicidal ideation, but I am often this frank about my love for you.

This moment from “Laura” is a good example of the facility with which Byenkya creates moments of intimate juxtaposition that point to personal stakes. In doing this, Byenkya is able to tap into a lyric sensibility and draw out the poetic from vulnerability. Here, too, is another example of how “a little too much truth” is necessary to speak about what matters.

*

Songs For Wo​(​Men) 2 can be found at Hello America Stereo Cassette site.
Find out more about Mugabi Byenkya’s work, at his site.

Ruin & Want cover reveal!

Happy to share the cover for my lyric memoir, Ruin & Want, forthcoming in November from Sundress Publications!

Book cover for Ruin & Want.

Super-excited to share this cover! Thank you to everyone at Sundress Publications for their work on this! Special thanks to Ani Araguz, my partner and artist behind the artwork on this cover. Here’s the original:

Art piece entitled “we go to sleep early so we can dream whats never in it for us.”

This piece is entitled “we go to sleep early so we can dream what’s never in it for us.” I love the sense of at once feeling mired and also breaking apart. This ties into the way ruining and becoming ruins because of want are used as a metaphor in the book.

Also, happy to share that the project has a description as well. Check it out:

Is selfhood constructed? And if so, by whom? Exploring queerness, race, body image, and family, Ruin & Want is a masterful meditation on otherness and identity. In a series of gripping, episodic prose pieces centered on an illicit relationship between a student and his high school English teacher, Araguz peels back the layers of his marginalized identity. By reflecting on his childhood into adulthood, Araguz grapples with finding a sense of self when early, predatory experiences have deeply affected his coming-of-age. In quixotic, deeply eviscerating lyric prose, Araguz delivers a troubling but bold memoir that handles this topic with courage while grieving what it costs survivors to reckon with harm’s aftermath. Yet in the midst of this struggle, we find many bittersweet and lingering gifts such as, “For the first time I saw myself as someone worth seeing,” that make this work necessary and unforgettable.

I’ve been working on R&W since 2016. The work has had me learning and growing over the years. The book is a testament to my survival. The final year of work had me realizing that I have been late in embracing my queer identity, something that has been difficult to do until the completion of this book. Still learning as I go.

Thank you to all who’ve read my work and supported! It means so much to be able to do this work and share with y’all. More soon!

Abrazos,

José 

Salamander virtual event & more!

The flyer for this Thursday’s virtual event.

I’m excited to welcome folks to the next Salamander virtual event happening this THURSDAY, 7/20. Here are the deets:

WHAT: Salamander issue #56 Virtual Reading
WHEN: Thursday, July 20th: 6-7PM EST
WHO: Brent Ameneyro, Milica Mijatović, & Joseph Dante
WHERE: Via Zoom! Register for this event at this link.
[Note: ASL interpretation will be provided at this event.]

Super-excited to be hosting these wonderful writers!

Opportunity for PNW Poets: Airlie Press is seeking full-length manuscripts (48–90 pages) from Pacific Northwest poets who are willing and able to commit to a three-year term of doing the shared work of running a collective press.

Find out more info on their Submittable page.

Also, Black Lawrence Press is having a sale on discounted poetry bundles in preparation for the Sealey Challenge. My own collection, Rotura, is part of the “Sealey Challenge 10 – Poets of Color” bundle. For more info on this sale, check out the BLP site.

Lastly, I had the honor of teaching for the Solstice low-residency MFA program’s summer residency last week. During this residency, amidst the rich conversations about poetry and creative nonfiction (the two genres I teach in), I was able to sit in on a craft class by essayist and novelist Xu Xi on “Writing the Intersection of the Public & Personal.” After the illuminating experience of the class, I have been engaging with samples of her work online. This essay is a good example of the dynamic range Xu Xi is capable of on the page as well as the richness of insight she offers her readers.

Be well

José

shout-outs: haiku, flight, & opportunity

Taking the time this week to do a few shout-outs including some call for submissions and some info on collections I’ve enjoyed and encourage y’all to enjoy.

First up is a shout-out to Goran Gatalica who was kind enough to share with me his haiku collection, Night Jasmine (Stajer Graf) with me. This multilingual translation collection (the haiku are translated from the original Croatian into English, French, Italian, Czech, Hindi, and Japanese) is filled with vivid examples of contemporary haiku navigating traditional themes with a contemporary sensibility.

The book is framed within the cycle of seasons, starting with spring and ending in winter. Here is a selection of four haiku, one from each season:

empty commuter train –
listening to spring drizzle
through an open window
–
August flood –
a softened meadow
reflects the stars
–
mother’s death –
I fold the first autumn rain
in my handkerchief
–
family reunion –
the half-frozen pond
flickering

Across these four haiku, one can get a sense of the sensibility Gatalica works with throughout Night Jasmine. There’s the haiku that frames an immediate sensation, as in the first one here which lingers over a moment of rain.

One sees the theme of rain come up again in the “August flood” and “first autumn rain” of the second and third haiku above. Rain continues to change life, but not suppress it; even in the grief of the third haiku, there is the animation of the folding handkerchief.

No rain in the last one here, but water is present in the “half-frozen pond.” What I love in this last one is the way the animation and presence is implied in the reflections on the pond, of fire, of the reunion itself.

To read more haiku by Gatalica go here. To learn more about Night Jasmine as well as to check out a reading of the collection, go here and here, respectively. Lastly, if you’re interested in a copy the book, reach out to me via my contact form and I’ll put you in touch with the poet.

Sharing about haiku in general had me thinking about my own e-chapbook, The Book of Flight (Essay Press). Check it out for free at the link and, if interested, here’s me answering questions about the process of working on this collection lyric aphorisms and haiku.

Lastly, for folks who are in the Pacific Northwest, Airlie Press has their Open Reading Period, which is free to submit to. Here are some further details:

Airlie Press is a nonprofit poetry collective based in and around Portland, Oregon. We seek manuscripts from Pacific Northwest poets who are willing and able to commit to a three-year term of performing the shared work of running a collective press. As a press, we commit to participate in the ongoing conversation and practice regarding inclusion and equity. To this end, we encourage submissions from underrepresented voices and poets from marginalized communities. Final editorial decisions are made by consensus. Each member’s book is published in the second year of their term. Authors have the final say about the content and presentation of their books. All profits from the sale of books are returned to the collective.

This is a great opportunity to get some hands-on experience with the publishing process as well as to help contribute to a dynamic writing community. To read more about Airlie Press as well as the stipend available to poets from underrepresented communities, go here.

Thank you for reading!

José

microreview: What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems by Roberto Carlos Garcia

review by José Angel Araguz

One of the unique experiences of being a poet / poetry reader is becoming accustomed with the creature known as the “selected poems.” The closest equivalent from outside the poetry world comes in the form of the “greatest hits” album. Yet, the novelty and nostalgic flash of such an album doesn’t exactly feel right with poetry.

Perhaps a volume of selected poems allows us to tap into a similar experience Italo Calvino speaks about in his essay “Collection of Sand”:

“I have finally come around to asking myself what is expressed in that sand of written words which I have strung together throughout my life, that sand that seems to me to be so far away from the beaches and desert of living. Perhaps by staring at the sand as sand, words as words, we can come close to understanding how and to what extent the world that has been ground down and eroded can still find in sand a foundation and model.”

This idea of glimpsing “a foundation and model” for literary experience through engaging with a writer’s collected body of work is, for me, an apt guide into the selected poems experience. Just as Calvino invites his reader into a communal act of assessment and study, readers of poetry are invited into a similar communal act, only one that includes celebration as much as reckoning.

Which is another way of saying: selected poems allow us to catch up.

It is in the experience of catching up that I encourage readers to enter What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems (FlowerSong Press) by Roberto Carlos Garcia. Across the three poetry collections gathered here in this volume, one can see Garcia establishing a foundation and model for poetic experience, meditation, and interrogation that ranges in depth and practice.

“Duplicity,” for example, has Garcia setting up the idea of subversive doubleness as it is experienced in the survival consciousness:

Hard truth:

First thing I do
as I breathe into a room
is search
for brown & black faces,
bobbing in America’s
post racial waters

Here, truth is experienced in the body, breathed as one enters a room and immediately seeks out the familiar. Before connection and presence, the speaker here admits to a need for safety. The phrase “post racial waters” also hits here and underscores the jarring contemporary moment for racialized peoples. This phrase gestures toward the systemic oppression behind that makes the negotiation being depicted here necessary.

This hard truth is followed by another hard truth toward the end of the poem:

Hard truth:

Light & Dark
sparkle the waters
like tinsel,
pretty chimera

No one really
has to

Does anyone really
have to?

Talk to me–

This move toward abstraction and image evokes the need for connection, fleshes it out into a need for beauty. The question “Does anyone really / have to?” is an interrupted one; it mirrors the opening of the poem (centered on an act of survival) and jars it, troubles it in an existential way. The move to end the poem with another interruption, the fragment “Talk to me–” is powerful for the way it simultaneously completes the question of the previous stanza while also serving as plea and demand.

This push and pull–from seeking to demanding–is similar to the push and pull experience the speaker is going through. Who is safe? Who is in this room with me? Who can I be in this room? These are questions that come readily to the minds of marginalized peoples navigating public spaces. In a way, what is being created here and in other poems throughout Garcia’s ouevre is a foundation and model for survival.

A similar drive can be found in the various “mixtape” poems in Garcia’s body of work. The mixtape is a form created by the poet themselves and “which resembles a cento in that it is composed of lines borrowed from other poets but also includes lines from fiction, non-fiction, rap lyrics, and other forms of literature…[and] is between 50 to 100 lines long and should have at least ten original lines written by the poet.” In “from Mixtape for City Kids from Dysfunctional but Happy Families, Kids Like Me,” one can see the payoff of such formal ambition:

Yes, you’ll survive. Look at me.
I’m shocked too, I’m supposed to be locked up too,
you escape what I escaped you’d be in Paris
getting fucked up too. My father said…surviving
one thing means another comes & kills you.
He’s dead, & so, I trust him. I know this isn’t much.

Here, survival as a theme appears again in the first line, and is given further depth by the interpolation of the Jay-Z lyrics in the second, third, and half of the fourth line. Survival leading to escape is a striking focus; the lines about the father take this focus to another level. And while the form brings together a number of borrowed voices, one can hear Garcia’s sensibility in the pathos of “I know this isn’t much.”

This latter sentiment can be found in several moments across Garcia’s poems. There’s this line from “Belief System,” a stunning poem of self-reflection that ends with “When I weep like this everyone hates me.” A hint of this dejected self-awareness can be found elsewhere in the ending of “Clean”: “I know the universe is within this body / & that somewhere along the way I forgot it.” Tracking this developing sensibility is just one of the thrills and rewards of reading What Can I Tell You?.

There are other formal experiments taken on by Garcia that are worth tracking and catching up on. These three poems published at The Acentos Review are good examples of Garcia’s ability to engage and trouble voice in inventive and dynamic ways. Across three poems, Garcia shows himself to have a distinct sense of line break as well as a clear understanding of the impact of visual presentation. Yet, with all this attention to craft, Garcia’s interrogation and reckoning with Latinidad in necessary and crucial ways remains consistent.

There was also, for me, the rare surprise of finding a revised version of a poem I was familiar with. This previous version of “Back to School” (second poem at the link) is one I’ve taught and connected with students on. In the version found in What Can I Tell You?, there is, among other changes, the move from third to first person. This move grounds an already powerful poem into a distinct presence. Within the scope of this selected poems, noting this revision feels like a distinct glimpse into a poet’s inner conversation and stakes.

The notes I made on the way to this review are messy and many. This messiness is perhaps another characteristic of reading and enjoying a book of selected poems. I haven’t even discussed Garcia’s facility with lyric prose; the title piece of his second collection black / Maybe: An Afro Lyric–a lyric prose piece honoring the complexity of the Afro-Latinx experience–this piece alone pays back a thousandfold the cost of purchasing this book.

I kept returning to the question of the title while reading. At times its question came off like a generous ask, an invitation; at other times, it reflected despair and persistence in the face of irrational, unforgiving systemic oppression. Throughout What Can I Tell You?, this title question is answered by the body of work Garcia has gifted us with here. Through this work, a foundation and model comes together and gives hope and direction for what poetry can name, reckon with, and bring light to.

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What Can I Tell You?: Selected Poems can be found at FlowerSong Press.
Find out more about Roberto Carlos Garcia’s work, at his site.

microreview: Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai

review by José Angel Araguz

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One of the first clues into the framing narrative of Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai comes straight from its stunning cover. This image of two people blending into one only to reveal the sea, one learns through reading, works to evoke the experience of the two siblings who serve as the speakers for this collection. Sadre-Orafai makes use of the first-person plural throughout in ways that reflect the blurring of boundaries and experience.

The presence of the sea is a starker matter; its presence speaks to the death by drowning of the siblings’ parents. The other element to take note of is the title itself. The first-person plural “we” here often feels like it’s addressing the reader in a direct, intimate way, similar to a letter.

These elements come together in startling and powerful ways. In “Low Recitation,” for example, a scene of the two siblings looking over maps quickly devolves:

We try to see different pictures, but the blue is kudzu, silencing the land. Name the world’s seven continents. Name the world’s five oceans. We think we see our mother’s body shape there.

Here, note the way the first sentence describes a sensory conflict, the siblings unable to “see” the map as a map. This sensory conflict, despite the effort to focus and “name,” further develops, with the final sentence in this excerpt showing how grief is pushing through. This sudden impression of their dead mother brings to mind the way grief can be said to come in “waves.”

The image of waves is ideal in getting a sense of the accumulative reading experience Dear Outsiders invites. There are poems depicting memories, some light, some dark; there are recurring statements as well as rich evocations of sea and beach town life. There are also a number of list poems, each a catalogue of reflecting from the details of this world in a rich, revealing ways. In “Boat Call,” a list of boat names ranges from the expected (“Argo / Cheers / Anchor Boy”) and the humorous (“Knot From Around Here”) to the more emotionally charged (“Verdant Hope” “Don’t Panic”).

This sequence helps add a further depth to the narrative. Along with further details of the world of these poems, they also work to vary the tone. In fact, the range in tone across the collection is a revelation to itself.

Yet, even in this variation, grief is underscored. “Historical Overview” has the siblings sharing:

Our parents tell us that all the water in the world has been here forever. The world will never make new water. Don’t bother trying to ask in your baby song.

This sobering, stern tone alongside the more distant, objective tone of the list poems are moments in the collection that give a sense of the siblings as children “trying on” specific tones modeled by their parents. By varying between these “parent” tones and the list poems, the more intimate, mourning tone comes across all the more charged and urgent.

This mirroring of the parents becomes clear by the end of the collection when an earlier reference to the parents keeping an inventory of what the siblings wear each day (“in case we’re abducted”) is brought back to mind in the final list poem, “In Case of Abduction.” This list poem is made up of three columns: one column of dates faces two columns listing sets of clothes worn; the gut punch comes toward the end of the poem which is made up of a series of dates but nothing listed for them.

The visual of this last list poem–that of an incomplete list–drives home the distinct elegiac experience Sadre-Orafai has created here for us. The days keep going, while the one keeping track of them does not. At the core of this experience is family, those people in our lives whose presence point us to the past and future as much as the present.

The title, then, takes on another meaning in the face of these multi-layered relationship. When one close to us dies, they, too, become dear despite being outside this existence.

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Dear Outsiders can be purchased from University of Akron Press.
Check out more poems from Dear Outsiders here.
Here’s another microreview, this time of Sadre-Orafai’s Malak.
Find out more about Jenny Sadre-Orafai’s work, at her site.

microreview: night mode by Caelan Ernest

review by José Angel Araguz

Reading through Caelan Ernest’s night mode (Everybody Press) I kept coming back to the idea of movement. There’s the movement of words across the page, the page here treated less like a field and more like a smartphone screen where text placement and white space engage the eye on a level that creates nuance and multiplicity of meaning. Like the decision in “somewhere a cyborg is taking note of the event that will transform it” to break lines around the syllable trans, a move that creates rich linguistic moments like “somewhere a cyborg is being trans / formed by the event.”

This move here nods to multiple meanings: there’s the trans of transgender as well as the enjambment into transformed that the eye completes in reading. Further, seeing the white space between trans and formed isolates the words in a way that evokes the personal isolation explored throughout the collection. The movement of the eye and of thought created by such breaks–this is what pulses at the core of these poems.

I see movement reflected again in the way these lyric sequences stretch across pages, at times with varying typographical choices and sizes, at other times with a single line on a page. Early in the collection, the line “at what point does night mode rupture into sky?” lives on one page across from the line “it’s been so long since the sun on my skin” on the facing page. A decision like this, which allows for time to be spent and for language to be dwelled on, evokes the similar engrossment and dwelling we do on our smartphones. Ernest’s poems are structured to place the reader in the position to literally “let that sink in.”

This last point is a good segue into acknowledging how Ernest’s work invites not just an aesthetic engagement but a social one as well. Here, I mean that the conversational tone of contemporary poetry is subverted and expanded to include emojis and internet speak, a move that is exemplary of the queer tradition of incorporating camp as part of expression and meaning-making. Through this move to include more of the daily, digital quotidian, Ernest allows for voice and meaning to range outside themselves.

One sees this even in the title phrase “night mode” which plays off the mode we can switch to on our smartphones. These words evoke so much public and private life. Some seek night mode as a way to focus; others to ease strain on their eyes. We are also different people at night. The implications of the word night throughout this collection reflects the world these poems inhabit. A sense of the effect of this choice can be seen in these lines from “put ur phone down for a sec“:

if we take a car to the party                                        we’ll have

enough time for a couple more drinks                                   or should we take

the train                    i get nervous                       taking the train               when

i look like this                i mean               i mean                 i like to look like this

but i don’t always like being looked at like this                                        u know

Here, we have the space of seeking expression despite risk. Night as a space of freedom is tempered by night as a space of others’ freedom infringing on yours. This charged moment, a sober reverie amid the adrenaline of revelry, speaks to what is being risked in being authentic, being one’s self.

There is a need for this kind of assertion of presence in the face of the current wave of inhumane prejudiced legislation against the trans community. On so many levels queerness is being persecuted and tamped down. Ernest adds their voice to the pushback against this hatred.

night mode centers not only what is at stake for the queer community, but through its ambition, vulnerability, and joy, also represents what we are celebrating and fighting for.

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night mode can be purchased from Everybody Press.
Also, here’s Ernest discussing their collection on the Of Poetry podcast.
Also, also: check out “put ur phone down for a sec” in full at b l u s h.
Lastly, to find out more about Caelan Ernest’s work, check out their site.

virtual event next monday + thoughts

Excited to share that I’ll be reading at virtual event next Monday, 5/29 as part of The Inflectionist Reading Series (details below). Super-excited for this opportunity–thank you to editors John Sibley Williams and A. Molotkov for reaching out!

WHAT: The Inflectionist Reading Series #7 featuring José Angel Araguz, Douglas Cole, Elizabeth Vrenios
WHEN: Monday, 5/29 (5pm PT / 8pm ET)
WHERE: online
REGISTRATION: Use this link to register to attend.

In honor of the reading, I’d like to share links to The Inflectionist Review‘s latest issue as well as issue 5, the latter of which includes a poetry feature and interview with me.

See you there if you’re able!

José

poet as instagram photo dump

There’s this practice on Instagram where people do a “photo dump” which has them sharing a random hodgepodge of recent pics. Please consider this post as a blog version of that. Am slowly relearning my voice here. More reviews coming, and other things as well

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The influence here, at least for this post, is a series of tabs that I’ve kept open for more months than I care to admit, all things that I’ve been meaning to share on here. Hope this makes sense, haha.

Without further ado:

Been late on sharing news of some of my former students: First, there’s N.K. Bailey, a PNW poet, who published a chapbook, A Collection of Homes with Bottlecap Press. Bailey is a dynamic poet whose work is intimate and imaginative.Also, I’m proud to have worked with Sarianna Quarne last fall on her honors creative thesis, the poems of which are featured in her self-published chapbook, Church Confessional Booth, which can be read for free on her site. Quarne’s work often uses the image as a jumping off point for charged, lyric meditations.Also, also: I’m happy to share that I recently had an essay of mine published in Bert Meyers: On the Life and Work of an American Master which is part of The Unsung Masters Series from Pleiades Press. I’ve written about Bert Meyers for a number of years on the Influence. Glad to have worked out this memory and experience with Meyers’ work! Thank you to Dana Levin and Adele Elise Williams for the opportunity and for being great to work with!Lastly, here is a collection of clips of me reading in various spaces: here’s me reading as part of the River Road Reading series; here’s me interviewed by dear friend and poet Dimitri Reyes; here’s the recording of my recent reading at The Grolier Poetry Bookshop alongside Levi Rubeck (this clips includes me reading a fresh occasional poem at the start); lastly, here’s me reading in January at the Solstice MFA faculty reading (this clip includes me reading an excerpt from my upcoming memoir, Ruin and Want).

I realize that’s a lot of clips at the end, here’s the link to my YouTube channel in case you’d like to save that to check them out later.

Alright, more content coming soon, as long as it makes me content, haha.

If you even just read this, thank you!

Abrazos,

José

writer feature: Amanda Galvan Huynh

This week I’d like to celebrate the debut poetry collection of stellar poet and friend, Amanda Galvan Huynh: Where My Umbilical Is Buried (Sundress Publications).

I’ve admired Galvan Huynh’s work on and off the page for some time now. She’s a committed Xicana educator as well as an editor, alongside Luisa A. Igloria, of the essay collection Of Color: Poets’ Ways of Making :: An Anthology of Essays on Transformative Poetics.

I had a chance to read the collection and provide a blurb. Here’s what I wrote:

“From the title, Where My Umbilical Is Buried, Amanda Galvan Huynh invites readers to engage with the metaphor and image rich sensibility that drive the poems within. From the roads, nights, and fields where memory lies ‘buried’ under the sounds of voices whispering, Coke tab bracelets jangling, and cumbias, these poems grow and flourish into a lyric gift, an expression of affirmation and presence for gente y familia—the living, the dead, as well as who we must be in between.”

—José Angel Araguz, author of Rotura

To get a sense of the dynamic range of the collection, check out these two poems published originally in Up the Staircase.

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Copies of Where My Umbilical is Buried can be purchased from Sundress Publications.

To read more of Amanda Galvan Huynh, check out her website.