Latino Poets Stake their Claim in American Letters [by Emma Trelles]

There is always a destination, by Miami-based painter John Sanchez.

 In Handling Destiny, his third book of poems, Adrian Castro examines the Yoruba idea that the course of a life is pre-determined, and only through faith is one able to fulfill it.

"One's destiny is completely personal,'' Castro says from his yellow-painted bungalow in Shenandoah, where he grows the backyard sage and star apple he uses in his practice as an Ifa priest and, also, in his poems.

"In the dream I would wash this stone with herbs. . . ., " he writes in a a title poem that travels between the geographies of mountain and shore as it considers the divine act of writing.  "Now I'd have to memorize these marks / make words then articulate them. . . . ''

 

For two decades the Cuban-Dominican Castro has forged a distinct lexicon in poems that meld Caribbean and West African cultures. Shango, the Yoruban deity of thunder and fire, is as likely to flash across his stanzas as is a bright calabash or a bundle of sugar cane.

 

Read the rest of this story online at the Miami Herald



Read mini reviews of poetry books by Adrian Castro, Francisco Aragon, Brenda Cardenas, Suzanne Frischkorn, and John Murillo here.

Comments

[DL]

Thank you, Emma. I love the John Sanchez painting.