Sonnets To Madness and Other Misfortunes

by Francisco X. Alarcón

Poetry. Latino/a Studies. Alarcon's poems in SONNETS TO MADNESS AND OTHER MISFORTUNES/SONETOS A LA LOCURA Y OTRAS PENAS are written in the liberating Hispanic sonnet vein inaugurated by ONE HUNDRED LOVE SONNETS by Pablo Neruda. Breaking away from traditional rhyming schemes and speaking in the free running language of concrete images, various poetic currents meet and mix in response to the present Latino conjuncture in the United States, and to the human condition generally. "...Alarcon is the dark humming bird, alone, still and yet in motion in the arc of time" --Juan Felipe Herrera. Spanish, with English on facing page, translated by Francisco Aragon.

Genres: Poetry

66 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2001

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to stop being an endless night,
a discarded book no one reads,
an umbrella left in the closet
opened only on rainy days

I'm so smeared with this fate,
gray and silent as a bolted door,
that loneliness like shadowy ink
has bruised my lips

with one yank I want to snap it -
this noose around my neck,
race out the door to meet you

at the docks where they've announced
your arrival, to you I confess -
all I want is to stop being night

- I, pg. 5

* * *

wake in my arms
beloved world -
may your soft stir
awaken me

- New Day, pg. 13

* * *

soar bird soar
until your beak
wounds the sun

- Bird, pg. 23

* * *

how lonely
you became
lava
that you turned
into a stone

- Tezontle, pg. 33

* * *

words
don't know me
if I approach them
they scratch at me
like wild
cats

words
hurt like
open wounds
it's hopeless to clean
and treat them -
they never heal!

- Wounded Words, pg. 43

* * *

night is an ocean of darkness
and every bed that beach
where waves overwhelm us -
where again we become fish

- Sea Nocturne, pg. 53