Hispanic Sonnets. By Alex Z. Salinas
“All of the poems in Hispanic Sonnets by Alex Z. Salinas can be categorized by intensity and precision. These poems utilize a ferocious language and challenge us to keep up with them in pace and idea. Somehow, the speakers become more and more clever with each poem. Maybe because, like Salinas himself, these speakers can conjure dreams from the wind, from the landscape around them, and from the many familiar people inhabiting these poems. As a Latino poet, I’ve long struggled with my ethnic identity while writing and have stared at the word “Hispanic” on the page and considered exactly what it means and how it relates to me. Salinas goes a long way in these poems to help us understand his relationship to this word and idea. In “Hispanic sonnet, or Dark Heart,” Salinas writes: “I’m like a split path casting dual shadows. /Like a shadow I’m a branch of my name. / I’m merely a name like everybody else. / Like everybody else I’m a collection of veins.” In another poem, “Hispanic Sonnet,” he further explores his relationship to his culture and writes: “Mob movies are to Scorsese what taquerias are to me.” Alex Z. Salinas, like the rest of us, is doing his best to define himself by ever-changing and obtuse terms. Fortunately for us, Salinas has the language, insight, and tenacity to bring these ideas to life.”—Aaron Rudolph, author of The Sombrero Galaxy
“All of the poems in Hispanic Sonnets by Alex Z. Salinas can be categorized by intensity and precision. These poems utilize a ferocious language and challenge us to keep up with them in pace and idea. Somehow, the speakers become more and more clever with each poem. Maybe because, like Salinas himself, these speakers can conjure dreams from the wind, from the landscape around them, and from the many familiar people inhabiting these poems. As a Latino poet, I’ve long struggled with my ethnic identity while writing and have stared at the word “Hispanic” on the page and considered exactly what it means and how it relates to me. Salinas goes a long way in these poems to help us understand his relationship to this word and idea. In “Hispanic sonnet, or Dark Heart,” Salinas writes: “I’m like a split path casting dual shadows. /Like a shadow I’m a branch of my name. / I’m merely a name like everybody else. / Like everybody else I’m a collection of veins.” In another poem, “Hispanic Sonnet,” he further explores his relationship to his culture and writes: “Mob movies are to Scorsese what taquerias are to me.” Alex Z. Salinas, like the rest of us, is doing his best to define himself by ever-changing and obtuse terms. Fortunately for us, Salinas has the language, insight, and tenacity to bring these ideas to life.”—Aaron Rudolph, author of The Sombrero Galaxy
“All of the poems in Hispanic Sonnets by Alex Z. Salinas can be categorized by intensity and precision. These poems utilize a ferocious language and challenge us to keep up with them in pace and idea. Somehow, the speakers become more and more clever with each poem. Maybe because, like Salinas himself, these speakers can conjure dreams from the wind, from the landscape around them, and from the many familiar people inhabiting these poems. As a Latino poet, I’ve long struggled with my ethnic identity while writing and have stared at the word “Hispanic” on the page and considered exactly what it means and how it relates to me. Salinas goes a long way in these poems to help us understand his relationship to this word and idea. In “Hispanic sonnet, or Dark Heart,” Salinas writes: “I’m like a split path casting dual shadows. /Like a shadow I’m a branch of my name. / I’m merely a name like everybody else. / Like everybody else I’m a collection of veins.” In another poem, “Hispanic Sonnet,” he further explores his relationship to his culture and writes: “Mob movies are to Scorsese what taquerias are to me.” Alex Z. Salinas, like the rest of us, is doing his best to define himself by ever-changing and obtuse terms. Fortunately for us, Salinas has the language, insight, and tenacity to bring these ideas to life.”—Aaron Rudolph, author of The Sombrero Galaxy
In Alex Z. Salinas’ previous poetry collections, he commenced conversation between the damaged body politic within himself and the bizarre, sometimes beautiful dream worlds of writers, painters and musicians—Muses—living and dead. In Hispanic Sonnets, the dials are turned up, the stakes (whatever they may be) are heavier, and the chorus of voices is louder, clearer. Hispanic Sonnets is part homage to the venerated and part turning the other cheek. In the final section of this book, a series of 15-line, free-verse sonnets continue the dialogue Salinas started in South Texas, or, to him, the center of his heart. This collection is the dream the poet still lives in, shattered and stitched back together with family, love, loss, pride and dignity; in short, Hispanic Sonnets is the book that least embarrasses him.