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MEXICO: travelwithme
Cohen invites readers to accompany her on a personal trip through Mexico, where she falls in love with three
rich and magical Oaxaca, Mexico City, and San Miguel. Taxi drivers, rug weavers, jewelry makers, and new friends populate her poems with stories of their lives in Mexico.
rich and magical Oaxaca, Mexico City, and San Miguel. Taxi drivers, rug weavers, jewelry makers, and new friends populate her poems with stories of their lives in Mexico.
29 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 1, 2023
2 people want to read
About the author
Esther Cohen
42 books14 followersWell it shouldn't be impossible for me to write a biography that is honest and satisfying and helpful and maybe even funny. But it is.
I am never entirely sure what to say, what details would be interesting and helpful and useful to you,
The Reader, you reader of these sentences and many others.
I am tallish. And curious. I am getting older.
Today at a shoe sale on 57th Street, because I was a few minutes early for a meeting I didn't really want to have with a woman who is successful, self-involved, and in the end interminably dull, today at a shoe sale I met a stranger, a Brazilian woman who teaches family sociology at Princeton. We had a happy conversation (about families, not shoes) for about 20 minutes.
I'll probably see her again.
I am never entirely sure what to say, what details would be interesting and helpful and useful to you,
The Reader, you reader of these sentences and many others.
I am tallish. And curious. I am getting older.
Today at a shoe sale on 57th Street, because I was a few minutes early for a meeting I didn't really want to have with a woman who is successful, self-involved, and in the end interminably dull, today at a shoe sale I met a stranger, a Brazilian woman who teaches family sociology at Princeton. We had a happy conversation (about families, not shoes) for about 20 minutes.
I'll probably see her again.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 20, 2023
I wish everyone would document their travels the way Esther Cohen does — not just with photos but with word paintings. With poems.
These poems capture the reason travel matters, how it lets us see things we’ve never seen. Her writing style perfectly mirrors the enthusiasm she feels for the places she travels to, for the people she meets of every imaginable background, for their life stories, and for the sensory richness she experiences — the “dishes and pots the colors of earth,” sounds tastes scents colors that surround her on her travels. She waxes rhapsodic about people practicing their crafts — the woman raising silkworms “making silk thread by thread,” and marvels at how her colors “come from natural dyes: pecan shells .. pomegranates, marigold,” and at the insects “squeezed by hand to reveal bright red, indigo, deep purple, orange.”
Cohen never ceases to celebrate ordinary people of all origins and elevates the artisanal to artistry— “a miracle of color and craft.”
These poems are hilarious too, as the poet reveals pre-trip she “bought an ugly grey nylon bag with many zippers thinking at last [she] will be organized.” Another hysterical moment how Cohen talks about the “crashed airport eggs” noting it’s an “odd menu for a pre plane flight.” Or when she and her husband are impressed with the cab driver’s word
“idiopathic,” never mind that the context of the conversation is her gastroenterological condition.. she races past that to express gratitude and joy and to find the humor in every passing moment, the moments rushing head over heels past us, as we keep up and simultaneously want to go back and savor her worldview.
The end result of “Mexico” leaves us with a burning desire to hit the road, to feel the same rush, the same grateful embrace of life, to leave our comfort zones in order to experience the places people food colors cities towns and villages of this endlessly diverse and fascinating and beautiful world.
These poems capture the reason travel matters, how it lets us see things we’ve never seen. Her writing style perfectly mirrors the enthusiasm she feels for the places she travels to, for the people she meets of every imaginable background, for their life stories, and for the sensory richness she experiences — the “dishes and pots the colors of earth,” sounds tastes scents colors that surround her on her travels. She waxes rhapsodic about people practicing their crafts — the woman raising silkworms “making silk thread by thread,” and marvels at how her colors “come from natural dyes: pecan shells .. pomegranates, marigold,” and at the insects “squeezed by hand to reveal bright red, indigo, deep purple, orange.”
Cohen never ceases to celebrate ordinary people of all origins and elevates the artisanal to artistry— “a miracle of color and craft.”
These poems are hilarious too, as the poet reveals pre-trip she “bought an ugly grey nylon bag with many zippers thinking at last [she] will be organized.” Another hysterical moment how Cohen talks about the “crashed airport eggs” noting it’s an “odd menu for a pre plane flight.” Or when she and her husband are impressed with the cab driver’s word
“idiopathic,” never mind that the context of the conversation is her gastroenterological condition.. she races past that to express gratitude and joy and to find the humor in every passing moment, the moments rushing head over heels past us, as we keep up and simultaneously want to go back and savor her worldview.
The end result of “Mexico” leaves us with a burning desire to hit the road, to feel the same rush, the same grateful embrace of life, to leave our comfort zones in order to experience the places people food colors cities towns and villages of this endlessly diverse and fascinating and beautiful world.
Displaying 1 of 1 review