Customer Reviews

Palm Crows (Camino del Sol)

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I stumbled upon Palm Crows by chance at a bookstore while vacationing in San Antonio. I was taken by the cover photo depicting four winter clad viejos with a tropical background. As I read through this collection of poetry I understood how displaced the poet felt, perhaps as much as the gentlemen on the cover appeared to be. This collection is solid and truthful. As an immigrant I can relate to these poems. The images are pure, original and waste no time with fancy words meant to sugar coat. This is the real stuff. The reason poetry should be written.

These are poems of Tallahassee and Havana, and the often-uneasy connection between. In Tallahassee, perhaps I have seen Mongo, his basset hound, but I haven't been to Havana, nor seen the Chupacabras (goat sucker). In Havana are the sugar cane fields, in Tallahassee an occasional sugar stalk found in the grocer "Tucked under a box of Holland tomatoes".

There are poems of animals, of hawks, of mosquito zappers, and songs of oxtail soup. There is a section on duende -- which may refer to Lorca's mysterious inspirational force, a sort of "trickster who meddles and stirs" up trouble.

These poems are also about exile, of leaving and wanting to get back, of freedom, but without luxury. There are also touching poems of exile from a father no longer here, but who spoke of an "in-between-ness of spirit that occurs in immigrants".