Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems

by Juan Felipe Herrera

For nearly four decades, Juan Felipe Herrera has documented his experience as a Chicano in the United States and Latin America through stunning, memorable poetry that is both personal and universal in its impact, themes, and approach. Often political, never fainthearted, his career has been marked by tremendous virtuosity and a unique sensibility for uncovering the unknown and the unexpected. Through a variety of stages and transformations, Herrera has evolved more than almost any other Chicano poet, always re-inventing himself into a more mature and seasoned voice. Now, in this unprecedented collection, we encounter the trajectory of this highly innovative and original writer, bringing the full scope of his singular vision into view. Beginning with early material from A Certain Man and moving through thirteen of his collections into new, previously unpublished work, this assemblage also includes an audio CD of the author reading twenty-four selected poems aloud. Serious scholars and readers alike will now have available to them a representative set of glimpses into his production as well as his origins and personal development.The ultimate value of bringing together such a collection, however, is that it will allow us to better understand and appreciate the complexity of what this major American poet is all about.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

288 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2008

About the author

Juan Felipe Herrera is the only son of Lucha Quintana and Felipe Emilio Herrera; the three were campesinos living from crop to crop on the roads of the San Joaquín Valley, Southern California and the Salinas Valley. Herrera's experiences as the child of migrant farmers have strongly shaped his work, such as the children's book Calling the Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats award in 1997. He is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist who draws from real life experiences as well as years of education to inform his work. Community and art has always been part of what has driven Herrera, beginning in the mid-seventies, when he was director of the Centro Cultural de la Raza, an occupied water tank in Balboa Park converted into an arts space for the community.
Herrera’s publications include fourteen collections of poetry, prose, short stories, young adult novels and picture books for children in the last decade with twenty-one books in total.

Reviews

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is intimacy inherently without borders, boundaries? Is intimacy possible with borders, boundaries? I posed these two questions and later walked out of the book club feeling so embarrassed at all that I shared, verbal-vomit-wise, not all related to those two questions but just everything and realized that there IS an approximate way to determine how much I have opened up my vulnerability, and it is how uncomfortable I am afterward. I am also—so—That is not to say I had a bad time at all. The discussion offered clarity and actual appreciation of these new and selected poems by Juan Felipe Herrera, whose work I didn't know until it was chosen as a selection. Now I also know he is the U.S. Poet Laureate.

(was about to type out my 8 pages of notes and list of 109 unfamiliar words but—nah)

[C.J. Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems covers the years 1969 to the year of the book’s publication, 2008. As a consequence, readers get to see the development of Herrera’s poems over a long period. He has been described as being deeply grounded in his Chicano culture, and this is certainly true. He writes as the child of migrant farm workers, but also as a politically-aware Chicano activist. He draws often on Aztlan themes, and he clearly identifies with oppressed minorities in other parts of the world, not just in the U.S.

Herrera’s poems are very personal to the point that they often become inaccessible, especially for those not as knowledgeable about events in Latin America and also the Aztec/Nahuatl heritage that he claims. My four stars, not five, reflect my personal response to Herrera’s poems, not his ability as a poet. Herrera’s poems did not capture me the way that Mary Oliver, my favorite, captures me. Nature, not Aztlan, calls to me. However, there is one exception - really two poems that go together.

“Ơyeme Mamita: Standing on 20th & Harrison” describes in a heartbreaking manner how a loving parent can unwittingly crush the aspirations of an emerging artist. “Remember when you told me one night in the early eighties, ‘I am worried about you, Juanito?’ And I turned around from my miniature writing table, second floor Capp Street, apartment #10, and froze? Your voice had a ruffled and serious timbre. Recognized it and looked away from the small amber light about my head. ‘I see you looking at yourself put letters on paper,’ you said. All my illusions of being a poet shrank, the wings of the eagle writer that sees all twittered into the shadow of a sparrow, a wavy blot of cold ink on a yellow legal pad.”

Every artist who had to struggle to fulfill his/her vision, who has been told that art is okay as a hobby but making a good living must always come first, that aspiring to be an artist means you are pretentious or just silly, will strongly relate to this.

Later, later, later, many poems later, Herrera writes another poem,

“Ơyeme, Mamita: I am that paper

I am that paper, I am those words now, the ink burns pyres in every cell.
When I look out to the trees, the long winding streets of Tortilla Flats, as
they shoot to the hills and cut the electric rails of the Muni buses to the
towers and Twin Peaks, the fog and into the sky haze, I see your signs, I read
your voice, now I do. Yes.

Ơyeme, Mamita, óyeme -- now that you are gone into the deep and silent
luminous fallen side of the night. Ơyeme.”

Juan Felipe Herrera found his voice, his words, his paper, and his ink. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2015 to 2017.

[Patrick Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am completely unqualified to critique poetry in any way whatsoever, so when listing this type of book I simply include a sample and let you judge for yourself:


"From here we see them, we the ones from here, not there or across,
only here, without the bridge, without the arms as blue liquid
quenching the secret thirst of unmarked graves, without
our flesh journeying refuge or pilgrimage; not passengers
on imaginary ships sailing between reef and sky, we that die
here awake on Harrison Street, on Excelsior Avenue clutching
the tenderness of chrome radios, whispering to the saints
in supermarkets, motionless in the chasm of playgrounds,
searching at 9 a.m. from our third floor cells, bowing mute,
shoving the curtains with trembling speckled brown hands. Alone,

we look out to the wires, the summer, to the newspaper wound
in knots as matches for tenements. We that look out from

our miniature vestibules, peering out from our old clothes,
the father's well-sewn plaid shirt pocket, an old woman's
oversized wool sweater peering out from the makeshift kitchen.

We peer out to the streets, to the parades, we the ones from here
not there or across, from here, only here. Where is our exile?

Who has taken it?

[Alarie]

Herrera is currently the U.S. Poet Laureate. The New York Times says, “A wildly inventive, always unpredictable poet.” That sums up this collection: 300 pages, over 40 years of work, so varied in range of topic and style that it’s difficult to write a review. For most readers, there’s something to love and something that escapes you. Herrera takes chances. The introduction calls him “a visionary kaleidoscope,” who creates “Picasso-like confabulations.”

I bought this book (which also comes with a CD of Herrera reading) because I had the opportunity to meet and hear him last week. He inscribed my book. If he ever does a reading near you, run to it! He is incredibly warm, engaging, humorous, and charismatic: a five-star performer.

On the page, however, he often lost me. He believes in speaking out for underdogs wherever they may be, and his book covered the world. Unfortunately, politics is not my cup of tea, and I got lost in his allusions. Some poems were completely or mostly in Spanish, which also left me out. However, when he read Spanish poems aloud, he often mixed in the translation as he went, which was beautiful. He loves sound and has a musical voice.

This collection includes excerpts from his earlier works. Of those, A Certain Man, Facegames, The Roots of a Thousand Embraces:Dialogues, and Loteria Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives were my favorite sections. Most of the poems are long, and pulling out excerpts seems a disservice. I suggest visiting his Poetry Foundation webpage for a sampling:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems...

[Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

I will keep returning to these poems and re-reading them, not because they have become favorites, but because I want to understand them, and have found so many opaque. They don't feel empty or facile, though it's a strange this to take away from a poem, that it reflects genuine craft, even when I have only dim sense of what the author is saying and haven't experienced its intended effect. But many of these feel like very good poems, just inaccessible to me, at least until I develop more sense of context to understand what Herrera is doing, or find a critical analysis that can open them up to me. For example, the series of loteria poems include great images and beautiful language, but I don't understand the referents enough to tell what most of them are saying.

Some of the simpler or more universal poems I do like, for example: 'Arc', which reminds me of Cavafy's erotic poetry, but in a present rather than a nostalgic moment; and 'Descending Tai Shan Mountain', in which the experience of being on the side of a sheer mountain serves as a metaphor for life generally.

[Gini · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this collection of poetry or most of it anyway. Several of the selections were just too graphic for me, but I understand Herrera is trying to translate war horror into words. And I think his efforts leave a more lasting impression than even a graphic photo. I appreciated his approach from his own roots rather than trying to translate that into another culture.
After watching him read several works which appear in this book I began to understand more and hear his voice coming through more often when I read those works and others. Title and "for" lines seem to mean more in poetry than elsewhere. So even those are hints at his intent.
His poetry isn't the iambic pentameter I endured in school. I think what he does is blank verse or in some cases a poetic prose. The amount of Spanish language is not so great that the English only reader will miss only a few selections, unless he has a friend that can help out. I did for a couple of works.
Herrera I think is still an activist poet. This book shows his continued concern for the downtrodden wherever they may be found.

[National Book Critics Circle · Rating 5 out of 5]

See NBCC Board Member Rigoberto Gonzalez's review at Critical Mass, as part of 30 Books in 30 Days:
http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/2...

[Allison HedgeCoke · Rating 5 out of 5]

No better poet in the creation!

[Jacqui]

Love this man's poems

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Herrara's poetry resonates with me, and this book even has a CD with him reciting his poems. Lovely combo.

[Garrett Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the goats!

[Rat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of poems hit me in so many different ways, in so many different wounds. Herrera is a poet of corazon, of pain, and of the people.

My favorite poems of his tended to be his “character sketch” type pieces. Notably, his three pieces on Citlalic “La Loca” Cienfuegos. They held such power and painted a wonderfully abstract portrait of a revolutionary I wish I knew in real life.

He is the first Latino Poet Laurate, and rightfully so.

[Chelsea · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can honestly say this is the worst collection of poetry I have ever read. Call me old school, but I don't think that the majority of Herrera's works even qualify as poetry. It is the most impassionate and thoughtless work I have ever had the displeasure of reading. The fact that Herrera is Poet Laureate just baffles me and, frankly, makes me doubt modern poetry in general.

[Raymonds009 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed these poems. The author sees the world in an avalanche of unusual adjctives and metaphors. Constantly I had the feeling that I did not know where I was standing as the rug was pulled out from beneath my feet.

This is a beautiful and tumultuous adventure that will not leave your consciousness soon. Highly recommended.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being an English minor in college, I felt that I must read a book by the new poet laureate of the United States. I enjoyed most of the poems in this book; however I have a feeling that I missed some of the cultural nuances. That "connotation" gets you every time.

[Stefanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I saw Herrera speak at the Tucson Festival of Books earlier this month, and he was wonderful. I loved the attached CD. Some of his poems are hard to get into, but I love the way he plays with language.

[Siel Ju · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the surrealist influences.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I need to read each of Herrera's collections. I need some time to process. I'm stunned. I think he's incredible.

[Vincen A · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I could give this a negative star I would. The fact that Herrera is poet laureate in the US makes me doubt modern poetry as a whole.

[Jennifer]

DNF. My Spanish is near to nonexistent and he switches freely between both Spanish and English. The handful I read that were in English only were lovely though.