Poems for Political Disaster

by Juan Felipe Herrera (Foreword), Timothy Donnelly (Editor), B. K. Fischer (Editor)

In time of crisis, we summon up our strength," wrote poet Muriel Rukeyser. This collection gathers poems--from the eve of the twenty-first century to the month following Trump's election--to mark a moment of political rupture, summoning the collective strength found in the languages of resistance and memory, subversion and declamation, struggle and hope. Poetry is a counterforce. We offer these poems to readers as Rukeyser did--"not walls, but human things, human faces.

Genres: Poetry

62 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2017

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

[(a)lyss(a) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In November we inched closer to the ledge over which one only falls once."

This is an interesting collection of poems. Some are more intriguing than others but it's the kind of collection you can get as much or as little out of it as you want.

Some of the poems seem rather knee-jerk and responsive, but overall there are some good ones that make you think.

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection. This has pretty much lived in my bathroom since I got it, but it hits hard and every poem is perfect.