The 12 poets featured by Gander ( Rush to the Lake ) in this bilingual collection, most from the post-war generation, have apparently been brought together because of their link to the feminist movement. Accordingly, this writing includes "testimonials" that record the daily experience of women, and it claims to engage an expressive language that defines itself against a traditional poetic voice. Unfortunately, in this case, the result is a composite work that is in fact marginal. From the opening poem with its ludicrous and clumsy description of men ("There is ritual emotion, / the cyclical summer heats up their balls. / They wait, they sniff, they prepare their come-ons") to the last selection with its fussy and obscure imagery ("Lovely deserted boundaries . . . / . . . mirages, blurring echoes / bind them together . . . "), the writing is self-indulgent and, for the most part, maudlin. There is little that characterizes this as Mexican writing; both the form and content are indistinguishable from similar texts by American poets of a certain caliber who are interested chiefly in undisciplined self-expression.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
This bilingual anthology of 12 contemporary Mexican women writers presents over 60 poems and excerpts from poems about kinds of birth and identity, "ascendence and degradation," tension between freedom and obligation, and what it means to be modern Mexican. With surreal delicacy, these poems invoke a world animated by immediacy of passion, where one strives for insight into what is fundamentally one's own: "I go into the fountain,/ my hair down,/ the sea is a sharp clanging in my brain./ The night is my truth" says Silvia Tomasa Rivera in "Untitled." These poets are beyond thinking of themselves as feminist, Latin American, or third world. Even though most are world travelers, their identity is Mexican. One cannot help admire their independent, sensuous spirit. With an introduction by Julio Ortega; highly recommended for larger collections.
- Frank Allen, West Virginia State Coll., Institute
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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