Clean Slate: New & Selected Poems

This first collection of Zamora's work to appear in English is set primarily in the context of the Nicaraguan struggles. Central to this bilingual volume is a probing long poem that juxtaposes a Sandinista Radio report of the day's battles for control of Nicaragua with the speaker's more intimate memories: her grandfather's porch, the church services of her childhood. An active revolutionary, Zamora, in many of her shorter political poems, which comprise a quarter of the volume, unfortunately verges on the didactic. However, through her introspective early work, as well as through previously uncollected recent poems, we see the poet at her lyrical best. Early on, Zamora writes of ``this everyday love'' and of the woman who feels a ``flutter of seeds'' in her stomach at her lover's approach. But during the political upheavals she begins to take note of the strength in the women around her. Emerging from torment, her poems assume a wry irony; in one poem she writes in the voice of an ``unemployed'' housewife, in another she instructs would-be beauty queens. On a more tender note, she makes peace with her mother and seeks to learn about her matrilineal heritage. The translation by a mother-and-daughter team is commendable. (Aug.)