Rebozos of Love: Floricanto 1970-1974. By Juan Felipe Herrera
In Rebozos there are celebrations, sweat lodges, songs calling out liberation, infinities of self & there is sweet corn, frijol, heart, naked earth & body, flaming waters, Quetzalcoatl, the speaking Quetzal, thorns, new words & shells, unfolding flowers, adobe, pueblos, venados, constellations, revelations of hemispheric unity, voice-stories from New Mexico, feathers & guitars, chakira, kupurisol — the essence of the sun. I enjoyed writing this book. I unshackled it, no titles, no page numbers. Sometimes I broke away from typical gendered terms in Spanish, I introduced Nahuatl deities and Huichol terms & there are drawings here & there, perhaps, like our Native weavings & yarn portals. Imagine yourself standing on a mountain at dawn, singing these poems from 1970 to 1974, at the crossroads of many social movements. At the beginning of a new wave of Latinx literature.
In Rebozos there are celebrations, sweat lodges, songs calling out liberation, infinities of self & there is sweet corn, frijol, heart, naked earth & body, flaming waters, Quetzalcoatl, the speaking Quetzal, thorns, new words & shells, unfolding flowers, adobe, pueblos, venados, constellations, revelations of hemispheric unity, voice-stories from New Mexico, feathers & guitars, chakira, kupurisol — the essence of the sun. I enjoyed writing this book. I unshackled it, no titles, no page numbers. Sometimes I broke away from typical gendered terms in Spanish, I introduced Nahuatl deities and Huichol terms & there are drawings here & there, perhaps, like our Native weavings & yarn portals. Imagine yourself standing on a mountain at dawn, singing these poems from 1970 to 1974, at the crossroads of many social movements. At the beginning of a new wave of Latinx literature.
In Rebozos there are celebrations, sweat lodges, songs calling out liberation, infinities of self & there is sweet corn, frijol, heart, naked earth & body, flaming waters, Quetzalcoatl, the speaking Quetzal, thorns, new words & shells, unfolding flowers, adobe, pueblos, venados, constellations, revelations of hemispheric unity, voice-stories from New Mexico, feathers & guitars, chakira, kupurisol — the essence of the sun. I enjoyed writing this book. I unshackled it, no titles, no page numbers. Sometimes I broke away from typical gendered terms in Spanish, I introduced Nahuatl deities and Huichol terms & there are drawings here & there, perhaps, like our Native weavings & yarn portals. Imagine yourself standing on a mountain at dawn, singing these poems from 1970 to 1974, at the crossroads of many social movements. At the beginning of a new wave of Latinx literature.
Juan Felipe Herrera was born in Fowler, California, on December 27, 1948. The son of migrant farmers, Herrera moved often, living in trailers or tents along the roads of the San Joaquin Valley in Southern California. As a child, he attended school in a variety of small towns from San Francisco to San Diego. He began drawing cartoons while in middle school, and by high school was playing folk music by Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Herrera graduated from San Diego High in 1967, and was one of the first wave of Chicanos to receive an Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) scholarship to attend UCLA. There, he became immersed in the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, and began performing in experimental theater, influenced by Allen Ginsberg and Luis Valdez. In 1972, Herrera received a BA in Social Anthropology from UCLA. He has taught at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and served as chair of the Chicano and Latin American Studies Department at CSU-Fresno.In 2015, Herrera was named Poet Laureate of the United States, for which he launched the projectLa Casa de Colores, which invites citizens to contribute to an epic poem. Herrera is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fresno and UC Riverside. He also holds honorary degrees from California State University, Fresno, Skidmore College, and Oregon State University. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016. He is the father of five children, and lives in Fresno, California, with his partner, the poet and performance artist, Margarita Robles.