Rigoberto González Recommends Eight Latinx Poetry Collections for National Poetry Month

At NBC News, Rigoberto González encourages readers to examine eight collections of poetry by Latinx writers as a way to celebrate National Poetry Month–and beyond! “Across the country, poetry lovers are hosting literary readings, writing workshops and conversations about why verse evokes joy, surprise, pride and other emotional responses,” he writes, “Latino poets, attuned to the concerns of the present moment, hold a special place and inspire us to look at our surroundings more closely and perhaps more critically.” From there: 

Here are 8 poetry collections, including a recently published one by Richard Blanco, President Barack Obama’s inaugural poet, that help us understand the complicated world we live in.

1. FRANCISCO X. ALARCÓN, “SNAKE POEMS: AN AZTEC INVOCATION” (UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA PRESS)

A recently expanded and republished collection that originally came out in 1992, “Snake Poems” quickly became a landmark book of poems for Chicano literature. The late Francisco Alarcón, a descendant of the Mexica (Aztec) people, came upon a collection of invocations compiled by a Mexican priest, and then responded to this text by reclaiming their purpose and language with his own trilingual book of poems. His imagery draws frequently from the natural landscape, and his tone is characteristically optimistic and inspiring: “water’s/ the heart of/ the mountain// its voice: a jaguar/ of echoes// el agua/ es el corazón de/ la montaña// su voz: un jaguar/ de ecos// ca atl/ iyolloh/ in tepetl// itozqui:/ ocelotl/ in caquitzi.”

2. RICHARD BLANCO, “HOW TO LOVE A COUNTRY” (BEACON PRESS)

“Forced to leave home, but home/ never leaves us,” writes Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles, who examines what it means to be an immigrant, an exile, or a refugee. In his search, he doesn’t necessarily seek answers, but kinship in the stories he encounters, as in the poem dedicated to the DACA DREAMers: “Como tú, I question history’s blur in my eyes/ each time I face a mirror…Como tú, I woke up to/ this dream of a country I didn’t choose, that didn’t choose me.” But the book doesn’t stop at lament, by naming America’s shortcomings, it asks us to imagine a better home, “a kingdom with no king,/ a city with no walls, a country with no name,/ a nation without any borders or claim.”

3. SARA BORJAS, “HEART LIKE A WINDOW, MOUTH LIKE A CLIFF” (NOEMI PRESS)

Embracing the word “pocha,” Borjas shifts its power from pejorative to restorative in these poems that celebrate the daring of Chicano youth (“Let’s scare the white people with our Spanglish”), a love of Mexican culture (“I’ll eat [tamales] with scrambled eggs and some green smoothie or// with my woke non-Mexican boyfriend on my Ikea plates”), and the blessing of being at peace with oneself (“I will die like an abrupt breeze/ because my mother was born like an abrupt/ breeze and a lonely candle lit in a patio/ needs someone to solve its flame”). Though the speaker recognizes what is surrendered when one acculturates into American society, she concedes: “I’m not allowed/ to forget/ where I came from.”

Read about the rest of González's recommendations at NBC News.