Selected Poetry

Based in Texas and New Mexico, Chicano writer and editor Cecilio Garcia-Camarillo helped bring about the explosive growth of Chicano poetry in the 1970s; his own bilingual poems mix public protest and private frustration with the lyrical schemes of Latin American poets like Neruda, redefining American identity and doing investigative reportage in verse. This collection makes much of Camarillo's verse available for the first time outside privately circulated chapbooks. One highlight is the several-page series ""The Line"" (1981), written almost entirely in English, describing characters (the poet among them) who wait in a long line for food stamps, and reveal much about themselves and the system as they do. Earlier works (some almost entirely in Spanish) track the poet's own lyrical anger; later ones portray Chicano families and young people in poverty and hope, strength and self-destruction. In the latest work here, from 1994's Dream-Walking, the poet recalls his own family (""cuando cae al piso/ le da una patada// mam bleeds profusely/ and the boy walks away// he wishes the moon/ was not fat and shiny/ so he could cry harder"") and then recounts a number of deeply disturbing incidents from later (dream?) life. In his substantial introduction, University of New Mexico professor of Spanish Lamadrid explains the career and assesses the achievement of a man whose work matters both to the thriving community of Chicano writers (many of whom he has edited and promoted), and to the still-emerging corpus of poetry blending N huatl, English, Spanish and other languages. (Apr.)