Lotería Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives

by Juan Felipe Herrera, Artemio Rodriguez (Illustrator), Rupert Garcia (Introduction)

Congratulations to Juan Felipe Herrera, who was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate for 2015-2016, the first Latino poet to receive this honor!

Loter�a Cards and Fortune Poems pairs the masterful artwork of Mexican artist Artemio Rodriguez with the poetry of Juan Felipe Herrera, one of America's finest Chicano writers.

Here is a collection of linoleum cuts and poetry based on the imagery of la loter�a, a popular folkloric game of chance that originated in 18th-century colonial Mexico and is still quite popular today. Rodriguez's prints are haunting and exquisite, and Herrera's hallucinatory, sometimes poignant poems were written in direct response to them. Together, they map the modern heart of this richly symbolic popular tradition.

Loter�a is a unique collaboration, a seamless union of word and image, and of Mexican and Chicano sensibilities. A commonly shared tradition has engendered a brilliant and inspiring leap across borders into a game of life with many ways to win.

Genres: Poetry, Art

208 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2001

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

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just started reading this book last night, and wow! Something really happens when Juan Felipe Herrera gives himself finite space and super-focused writing project. Whereas the works of his I've previously read find political and/or historical sprawl contained in tight litany or, in the case of "Punk Half Panther," in Border Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream, the formalistic sprawl is contained within Whitman-esque multitudes, there is no sprawl to speak of in Loteria Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives. And so the poems themselves pop. They are so crisp and rich, the music is so tight and lovely, not a word wasted. Even when he employs his usual address, "hey baby," and all, the poems remain tight and oftentimes terse. Still, Juan Felipe is able to leave these open ends for us, to leave more for us to think about than is apparent in the image. The images themselves, rendered by Artemio Rodriguez, are dense and complex, ominous, surprising, in contrast to the relatively straight forward, singular images on traditional loteria cards.

That's all I got for now.

[Therese L. Broderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you dared to tempt Destiny by buying a lottery ticket in January 2016 for the preposterous jackpot of 1.5 billion dollars, you should now buy this "Loteria" book, and weep. This book features poems by the current U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera who, from his years as an activist, knows how fickle Fate can be, and how corrupt the temptations of Power, Fame, and Fortune.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are weird and funny poems are paired with linocut versions of updated lorteria cards, blending themes and issues of the contemporary with the historical. This is a playful collaboration and very well executed.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engrossing poems, sometimes more dangerous than I'd prefer nowadays but challenging and exacting.

[Tomek · Rating 1 out of 5]

The wood prints are interesting, but I admit I have no patience for the poetry. It isn't quite as indigestible as other collections I've perused, but they were still a bit perplexing.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

this was phenomenal. The poems. The prints. Amazing.