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A Small Story about the Sky
In his thirteenth book, Alberto Rios casts an intense desert light on the rich stories unfolding along the Mexico-US border. Peppered with Spanish and touches of magical realism, ordinary life and its simple props—morning showers, spilled birdseed, winter lemons—becomes an exploration of mortality and humanity, and the many possibilities of how lives might yet be lived.
Mad Honey
Made from magnificent rhododendron, poisonous rhododendron,
Very difficult-to-pronounce rhododendron—whatever
Rhododendron even is—I would have to look it up myself,
This word sounding puffed up, peacocky with its
Indianapolisly-long spelling, all those letters moving in and out.
But the plant itself, the plant and the bees that find it:
The bees see in its purple flower, first, a purple flower.
They do not spell it. They do not live in fear of quizzes,
Purple offering what it has to offer, unapologetic, without further
Definition, purple irresistible to the artist's and to the bee's eye—
Who can blame either one this first-grade impulse toward love?
Purple, always wearing something low-cut . . .
Alberto Rios is the Poet Laureate of Arizona and host of the PBS program Books & Co. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for his poetry volume The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body. He teaches at Arizona State University and lives in Chandler, Arizona.
Mad Honey
Made from magnificent rhododendron, poisonous rhododendron,
Very difficult-to-pronounce rhododendron—whatever
Rhododendron even is—I would have to look it up myself,
This word sounding puffed up, peacocky with its
Indianapolisly-long spelling, all those letters moving in and out.
But the plant itself, the plant and the bees that find it:
The bees see in its purple flower, first, a purple flower.
They do not spell it. They do not live in fear of quizzes,
Purple offering what it has to offer, unapologetic, without further
Definition, purple irresistible to the artist's and to the bee's eye—
Who can blame either one this first-grade impulse toward love?
Purple, always wearing something low-cut . . .
Alberto Rios is the Poet Laureate of Arizona and host of the PBS program Books & Co. He was a finalist for the National Book Award for his poetry volume The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body. He teaches at Arizona State University and lives in Chandler, Arizona.
125 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 2015
About the author
Alberto Alvaro Ríos
28 books42 followersIn 1952, Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arizona in 1974 and a MFA in Creative Writing from the same institution in 1979.
He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); The Theater of Night (2007); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Teodora Luna's Two Kisses(1990); The Lime Orchard Woman (1988); Five Indiscretions (1985); and Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), which won the 1981 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Donald Justice.
Other books by Ríos include Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), The Curtain of Trees: Stories (1999), Pig Cookies and Other Stories (1995), and The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (1984), which won the Western States Book Award.
Ríos's poetry has been set to music in a cantata by James DeMars called "Toto's Say," and on an EMI release, "Away from Home." He was also featured in the documentary Birthwrite: Growing Up Hispanic. His work has been included in more than ninety major national and international literary anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
"Alberto Ríos is a poet of reverie and magical perception," wrote the judges of the 2002 National Book Awards, "and of the threshold between this world and the world just beyond."
He holds numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, the Arizona Governor's Arts Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Since 1994 he has been Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1982. He lives in Chandler, Arizona.
He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); The Theater of Night (2007); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Teodora Luna's Two Kisses(1990); The Lime Orchard Woman (1988); Five Indiscretions (1985); and Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), which won the 1981 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Donald Justice.
Other books by Ríos include Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), The Curtain of Trees: Stories (1999), Pig Cookies and Other Stories (1995), and The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (1984), which won the Western States Book Award.
Ríos's poetry has been set to music in a cantata by James DeMars called "Toto's Say," and on an EMI release, "Away from Home." He was also featured in the documentary Birthwrite: Growing Up Hispanic. His work has been included in more than ninety major national and international literary anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
"Alberto Ríos is a poet of reverie and magical perception," wrote the judges of the 2002 National Book Awards, "and of the threshold between this world and the world just beyond."
He holds numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, the Arizona Governor's Arts Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Since 1994 he has been Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1982. He lives in Chandler, Arizona.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
October 20, 2020
Reading Road Trip 2020
Current location: Arizona
Alberto Ríos is Arizona's first poet laureate, and he's yet another writer I might never had known had I not headed out on this virtual road trip of mine. Here I am, both a poet and a rather savvy lover of poetry, and I had never heard of this man.
Mr. Ríos, who's Mexican-American, pays homage, in his own way, to his Spanish heritage by embracing an incredibly unique visual poetry that has its roots in magical realism. Many of his images are dominated by desert scenes, cactus flowers and exotic fruit, but his great grasp of the feminine divine is what really pulled me in as a reader. The way he honors women in his writing is nothing short of delectable.
It was challenging for me to select just one poem from this exceptional collection, but I do think I've settled on the one that will be the most memorable for me:
The Thirst of Things
Desert having been ocean
Remembers water, misses it,
Hugs it and kisses it when it visits,
Steals a little when it tries to leave,
Prickly pear and ocotillo and mesquite
A little fatter, a little wider, a little greener,
These plants having been coral and puffer fish
And green seaweed in their ocean lives.
In this place now, one can still see
This place then,
Every grain of sand once having been
A point of light in the crest of a wave.
Heat on the highway, that slight, quivering
Ghost of the desert world,
That mirage shows for its brief moment
The fierce what-was in all of us.
Current location: Arizona
Alberto Ríos is Arizona's first poet laureate, and he's yet another writer I might never had known had I not headed out on this virtual road trip of mine. Here I am, both a poet and a rather savvy lover of poetry, and I had never heard of this man.
Mr. Ríos, who's Mexican-American, pays homage, in his own way, to his Spanish heritage by embracing an incredibly unique visual poetry that has its roots in magical realism. Many of his images are dominated by desert scenes, cactus flowers and exotic fruit, but his great grasp of the feminine divine is what really pulled me in as a reader. The way he honors women in his writing is nothing short of delectable.
It was challenging for me to select just one poem from this exceptional collection, but I do think I've settled on the one that will be the most memorable for me:
The Thirst of Things
Desert having been ocean
Remembers water, misses it,
Hugs it and kisses it when it visits,
Steals a little when it tries to leave,
Prickly pear and ocotillo and mesquite
A little fatter, a little wider, a little greener,
These plants having been coral and puffer fish
And green seaweed in their ocean lives.
In this place now, one can still see
This place then,
Every grain of sand once having been
A point of light in the crest of a wave.
Heat on the highway, that slight, quivering
Ghost of the desert world,
That mirage shows for its brief moment
The fierce what-was in all of us.
May 23, 2018
As someone who is pretty new to poetry, I am still discovering my tastes. But this is a fine collection of poems from Arizona's first Poet Laureate. While some of his best poems in this collection have to do with the border between the U.S. and Mexico, but there is a wide variety of subjects covered in this collection. His poems on nature are particularly interesting. I especially loved Mr. Ríos' use of simile, non-rhyming couplets, and free verse. It made his work seem less bound to the conventions that I am used to seeing from my high school days. And while not every poem is a hit, more of them are hits than not. This is a good poetry book for people interested in the border and nature.
November 14, 2020
I am freshly off a poetry book fail. This was the perfect antidote and it has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I don't know who recommended it to me, but thank you person/bookstore/newsletter!
I highlighted at least a dozen of my favorites. And reread the majority of them. Poems, for me, are better the more I read them.
One thing leads to another, and the poem The Circus in the Desert about the artist Philip Curtis has lead me to a book of his art. A new to me find.
Alberto Rios was born in Arizona, but a lot of these show his Mexican heritage and I love that.
I highlighted at least a dozen of my favorites. And reread the majority of them. Poems, for me, are better the more I read them.
One thing leads to another, and the poem The Circus in the Desert about the artist Philip Curtis has lead me to a book of his art. A new to me find.
Alberto Rios was born in Arizona, but a lot of these show his Mexican heritage and I love that.
July 8, 2023
"Something is always broken.
Something is always fixed"
That stanza has given me a lot of hope this past year
Something is always fixed"
That stanza has given me a lot of hope this past year
June 1, 2019
My breath kept catching on these poems, and I was infused with such a sense of family, and place, and love of all kinds, and desert winds, and love for our country. I think his voice is the one that needs to be heard right now; avant-garde poetry aside in its own place, but these are the ones that need to be heard and absorbed for the times are dire and the times are apocalyptic as people turn against the persecuted and the victims fleeing torture and crime and violence. Depraved indifference inundates our society from the basest to the highest reaches and we need to remember human rights, human feelings, humanity, and these poems reach in and do that.
The Border: A Double Sonnet
The border is a line that birds cannot see.
The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.
The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.
The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up
but making it hard to breathe.
The border is a rusted hinge
that does not bend.
The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.
The border says
Stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language,
and keeps going.
The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire
scarred into the skin of so many. The border has always been
a welcome stopping place but is now a Stop sign,
always red. The border is a jump rope still there
even after the game is finished. The border is a
real crack in an imaginary dam.
The border used to be an actual place but now
it is the act of a thousand imaginations.
The border, the word border, sounds like order,
but in this place they do not rhyme.
The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.
The border smells like cars at noon and woodsmoke in the evening.
The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.
The border is two men in love with the same woman.
The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.
The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.
The border is “NoNo” the Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh.
The border is a locked door that has been promoted. The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.
The border has become Checkpoint Chale. The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.
The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier. The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.
The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes. The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.
Dry Water
We have rain, but it’s a dry rain, a skinny rain,
A thin water coming down in a covert action,
Rain that comes down already thirsty.
No good for making soup,
Its wet is gone by the time it reaches the ground.
Maybe that’s smart.
Maybe this place is hiding something,
Taking care of us. Maybe there’s a great reserve of rain
Kept in a secret, carefully guarded, underground
Aquifer treasure chest,
Like all the gold we’ve heard about at Fort Knox
But which we’ve never actually seen,
Even though they say there is so much of it.
Our rivers are that way, too—invisible,
Sandy acts of faith. This is exaggeration, of course:
Water in this place is not uncommon.
But to see it, you must spend years training the eye.
And to taste it, to taste it at all,
You must dream it into the glass you think you hold.
Words in the Woods
All the words that have been spoken here
Over time, over centuries: they stay.
We hear occasional echoes, think
A bird has chirped or a cricket,
But it was a moment of laughter
Happy enough to be here still
Even as the years themselves are gone.
A glint in someone’s eye, a quality of light—
Something, something made one say words
To another, and they laughed.
Words spoken have some slight weight:
As they go forward from the mouth, they fall In a slow arc over time.
But they do not go—
In falling they are in the humus that feeds the trees,
And in their time they enter the trees
And are the trees, so that the limbs
And the leaves of these trees, this shade
Is that conversation, so pleasant, so long ago.
Epithalamium: Next to Me
I was full not of bones but of feeling,
I was full not of bones but of you.
Your hands became my ribs, my ribs
Your fingers, and they held me—
They hold me now.
I began to feel I had clouds, rivers, stars for bones—
I felt them move inside, enough to let you in.
When I first saw you, when you stood next to me
You stood next to me and a little inside,
The way you stand next to me now.
Your arm inside mine, your left hip in my right,
Your hip a little in the middle of my walk.
I let you into the bones inside me and did not let you out.
I see you in front of me now but I can close my eyes
And see you too. I didn’t understand this,
I didn’t know this would happen
I didn’t know you would stand at—and be—my side
Until now.
Epithalamium: The Map of Us
Some foods to be their best cook for days.
Some mountains take centuries to form.
Some loves simmer and form similarly,
Using the surprising scale of big maps—
We know it as One inch equals one mile.
Some loves, however, use no measure
But themselves, one inch or one mile
Meaningless in the moment of a hand held,
Meaningful in the hold of a face happy
To be held, an arm ready to reach out.
These are the maps we make of ourselves,
The foods and mountains, the world,
The stars, the air we are for each other—
These are the measure. We are ourselves,
Every inch a mile for each other.
My friend, that’s all.
And it is everything.
We used to be somebody else,
One here, one there, but now together
We are today, and will be tomorrow.
Epithalamium: Breathlessness
The night stars make a shore of sand in the summer sky,
A brilliant beach of The Impossible.
You have found this place in each other,
Not far away but up close,
Found it in the stopped moment in which you now live:
A hand inside a hand, a look that sees
What the other sees, ears that hear one song,
A love alive inside heartbeat and deep breath and dark hair.
This place is yours now, the broad shore of a new world.
It is your abiding gift to each other to know
That when together you close your eyes
It is the closed eye that sees farthest,
To know how, in the stopped moment, it is breathlessness—
Not breathing—that defines you.
As you stand in this imagined, now real, place of yourselves,
You are for each other—
More alive, more present, no greater adventure
Than each other.
The Circus in the Desert
In the great Sonoran desert of the Southwest,
He found room enough for time itself...
In this vastness he found the world of the living
Waiting their turn to move on
Standing next to the generations that had already passed
But had not yet left this world,
Not yet finished with their grand and stark moment,
Not yet done with their tea and amusements.
In the emptiness of the desert, he saw the crowd.
He did not invent—he saw what faced him
And spoke back to it in its language.
Hello to the band, he said, hello and farewell.
In this darkness, in this desert,
With a wave good-bye of his own hand,
He bid his monsters and men
March in parade against the coming of the quiet.
Hands on the Wall of a Church
I am full where I was empty—
My arms can hold no more. I have found what I was looking for
Though what it is I cannot see.
What is invisible fills me
But it is not what you think,
Not God, not the saints, not angels.
I feel my mother’s hand
Touching this same wall.
I feel my grandmother’s hand In the story my mother told
Of the summer day when her mother
Brought her to this church,
How they stood together and put their hands
To its wall, which was so big.
How my grandmother told my mother
That her own mother had done the same
So many years ago
All those years suddenly in this moment.
All those hands in mine
As I touch the wall of a church,
This church, here, hard, now.
Citizens of a Great Country
We are made of them, finally, as we try to sleep, to reach
The place that night with all its stars has shown us,
All its stars as all of us, and all our cities, and all our countries,
All our histories and all our families, every one.
The country of us is large.
We ourselves are its border
Wherever we are, whoever we are, safe as we try and want to be.
The Border: A Double Sonnet
The border is a line that birds cannot see.
The border is a beautiful piece of paper folded carelessly in half.
The border is where flint first met steel, starting a century of fires.
The border is a belt that is too tight, holding things up
but making it hard to breathe.
The border is a rusted hinge
that does not bend.
The border is the blood clot in the river’s vein.
The border says
Stop to the wind, but the wind speaks another language,
and keeps going.
The border is a brand, the “Double-X” of barbed wire
scarred into the skin of so many. The border has always been
a welcome stopping place but is now a Stop sign,
always red. The border is a jump rope still there
even after the game is finished. The border is a
real crack in an imaginary dam.
The border used to be an actual place but now
it is the act of a thousand imaginations.
The border, the word border, sounds like order,
but in this place they do not rhyme.
The border is a handshake that becomes a squeezing contest.
The border smells like cars at noon and woodsmoke in the evening.
The border is the place between the two pages in a book where the spine is bent too far.
The border is two men in love with the same woman.
The border is an equation in search of an equals sign.
The border is the location of the factory where lightning and thunder are made.
The border is “NoNo” the Clown, who can’t make anyone laugh.
The border is a locked door that has been promoted. The border is a moat but without a castle on either side.
The border has become Checkpoint Chale. The border is a place of plans constantly broken and repaired and broken.
The border is mighty, but even the parting of the seas created a path, not a barrier. The border is a big, neat, clean, clear black line on a map that does not exist.
The border is the line in new bifocals: below, small things get bigger; above, nothing changes. The border is a skunk with a white line down its back.
Dry Water
We have rain, but it’s a dry rain, a skinny rain,
A thin water coming down in a covert action,
Rain that comes down already thirsty.
No good for making soup,
Its wet is gone by the time it reaches the ground.
Maybe that’s smart.
Maybe this place is hiding something,
Taking care of us. Maybe there’s a great reserve of rain
Kept in a secret, carefully guarded, underground
Aquifer treasure chest,
Like all the gold we’ve heard about at Fort Knox
But which we’ve never actually seen,
Even though they say there is so much of it.
Our rivers are that way, too—invisible,
Sandy acts of faith. This is exaggeration, of course:
Water in this place is not uncommon.
But to see it, you must spend years training the eye.
And to taste it, to taste it at all,
You must dream it into the glass you think you hold.
Words in the Woods
All the words that have been spoken here
Over time, over centuries: they stay.
We hear occasional echoes, think
A bird has chirped or a cricket,
But it was a moment of laughter
Happy enough to be here still
Even as the years themselves are gone.
A glint in someone’s eye, a quality of light—
Something, something made one say words
To another, and they laughed.
Words spoken have some slight weight:
As they go forward from the mouth, they fall In a slow arc over time.
But they do not go—
In falling they are in the humus that feeds the trees,
And in their time they enter the trees
And are the trees, so that the limbs
And the leaves of these trees, this shade
Is that conversation, so pleasant, so long ago.
Epithalamium: Next to Me
I was full not of bones but of feeling,
I was full not of bones but of you.
Your hands became my ribs, my ribs
Your fingers, and they held me—
They hold me now.
I began to feel I had clouds, rivers, stars for bones—
I felt them move inside, enough to let you in.
When I first saw you, when you stood next to me
You stood next to me and a little inside,
The way you stand next to me now.
Your arm inside mine, your left hip in my right,
Your hip a little in the middle of my walk.
I let you into the bones inside me and did not let you out.
I see you in front of me now but I can close my eyes
And see you too. I didn’t understand this,
I didn’t know this would happen
I didn’t know you would stand at—and be—my side
Until now.
Epithalamium: The Map of Us
Some foods to be their best cook for days.
Some mountains take centuries to form.
Some loves simmer and form similarly,
Using the surprising scale of big maps—
We know it as One inch equals one mile.
Some loves, however, use no measure
But themselves, one inch or one mile
Meaningless in the moment of a hand held,
Meaningful in the hold of a face happy
To be held, an arm ready to reach out.
These are the maps we make of ourselves,
The foods and mountains, the world,
The stars, the air we are for each other—
These are the measure. We are ourselves,
Every inch a mile for each other.
My friend, that’s all.
And it is everything.
We used to be somebody else,
One here, one there, but now together
We are today, and will be tomorrow.
Epithalamium: Breathlessness
The night stars make a shore of sand in the summer sky,
A brilliant beach of The Impossible.
You have found this place in each other,
Not far away but up close,
Found it in the stopped moment in which you now live:
A hand inside a hand, a look that sees
What the other sees, ears that hear one song,
A love alive inside heartbeat and deep breath and dark hair.
This place is yours now, the broad shore of a new world.
It is your abiding gift to each other to know
That when together you close your eyes
It is the closed eye that sees farthest,
To know how, in the stopped moment, it is breathlessness—
Not breathing—that defines you.
As you stand in this imagined, now real, place of yourselves,
You are for each other—
More alive, more present, no greater adventure
Than each other.
The Circus in the Desert
In the great Sonoran desert of the Southwest,
He found room enough for time itself...
In this vastness he found the world of the living
Waiting their turn to move on
Standing next to the generations that had already passed
But had not yet left this world,
Not yet finished with their grand and stark moment,
Not yet done with their tea and amusements.
In the emptiness of the desert, he saw the crowd.
He did not invent—he saw what faced him
And spoke back to it in its language.
Hello to the band, he said, hello and farewell.
In this darkness, in this desert,
With a wave good-bye of his own hand,
He bid his monsters and men
March in parade against the coming of the quiet.
Hands on the Wall of a Church
I am full where I was empty—
My arms can hold no more. I have found what I was looking for
Though what it is I cannot see.
What is invisible fills me
But it is not what you think,
Not God, not the saints, not angels.
I feel my mother’s hand
Touching this same wall.
I feel my grandmother’s hand In the story my mother told
Of the summer day when her mother
Brought her to this church,
How they stood together and put their hands
To its wall, which was so big.
How my grandmother told my mother
That her own mother had done the same
So many years ago
All those years suddenly in this moment.
All those hands in mine
As I touch the wall of a church,
This church, here, hard, now.
Citizens of a Great Country
We are made of them, finally, as we try to sleep, to reach
The place that night with all its stars has shown us,
All its stars as all of us, and all our cities, and all our countries,
All our histories and all our families, every one.
The country of us is large.
We ourselves are its border
Wherever we are, whoever we are, safe as we try and want to be.
December 3, 2023
While I didn't love the collection, admittedly, I once hung this in the copyroom at school:
https://poets.org/poem/we-dogs-thursday
https://poets.org/poem/we-dogs-thursday
December 19, 2016
Poetry (in six sections) by Arizona's first poet laureate. Wildly inconsistent from section to section. I found nothing worth noting in the first section or the fourth section. I particularly enjoyed his series on the animals and flora of the desert, though I'm not sure how to describe the style he used for the pieces: metaphors or personification or something else perhaps.
Favorites:
"Desert Bestiary Sonnet, One"
"Desert Flora Sonnet, One"
"Desert Bestiary Sonnet, Two"
"Me the Man in a Hurry" - walking behind a slow-moving woman
"The Border: A Double Sonnet" - U.S. - Mexico border
"The Broken"
How easy to spend a day writing a poem,
How hard to spend a life writing a thousand.
- "On Gathering Artists"
Flowers along the highway are memos of something we were supposed to remember.
- "Desert Flora Sonnet, Two"
Grape stands in the police line-up next to planet, bubble, marble, and the
unshaved letter O.
- "Desert Flora Sonnet, Three"
Favorites:
"Desert Bestiary Sonnet, One"
"Desert Flora Sonnet, One"
"Desert Bestiary Sonnet, Two"
"Me the Man in a Hurry" - walking behind a slow-moving woman
"The Border: A Double Sonnet" - U.S. - Mexico border
"The Broken"
How easy to spend a day writing a poem,
How hard to spend a life writing a thousand.
- "On Gathering Artists"
Flowers along the highway are memos of something we were supposed to remember.
- "Desert Flora Sonnet, Two"
Grape stands in the police line-up next to planet, bubble, marble, and the
unshaved letter O.
- "Desert Flora Sonnet, Three"
October 26, 2016
The gentleness and beauty of these poems linger a while. Ríos skilfully weaves metaphor without it ever feeling forced. The desert sonnets carry lines such as "Tarantulas are awkward left hands in search of a piano"; "Saguaros award everyone a touchdown". Elsewhere nature is always close to the bone, being poems of the desert and poems of the borderlands. The harshness of the land never feels a hardship and as someone who loves the desert landscape, I loved the lightness the poems bring.
January 3, 2017
First book of the year!
Incredible read. Some moments of pure joy, awe, goosebumps.
Incredible read. Some moments of pure joy, awe, goosebumps.
February 12, 2020
I love Alberto Rios! His vision, generously shared, in accessible and delightful manner is a joy to read.
Take for example, "Desert Bestiary Sonnet, One".
I do not live in the SouthWest or near a desert... but I love the first line,
"Hummingbirds are quarter notes that have left the nest of the flute."
14 animals, each becoming something extraordinary -- I will never be scared of a tarantula now, knowing they are "awkward left hands in search of a piano."
Some of my favorites: "When Giving is All You Have"; "Stardust and Centuries" -- with its epigraph: "We listen for so long in our lives until one day//we push back our chairs and stand to speak".
Indeed, I sense someone who has listened long and well -- and thought hard -- imagine -- as a man, understanding "I am half woman on my mother's side." -- and then all women... and all people become candidates for beings of worth-- the products of the best we can be."
The same idea comes up in the poem, "The Who that I am" and "Hands on the Wall of a Church"
The title poem explains light... beginning with fire and ends with explaining how "the sky comes so slowly in the morning/still unsure of what is there" -- how the fire wanted to come home /with something of its own/to tell/ and it did/ a small piece of blue in its mouth."
For a glimpse at ourselves... I love the refreshing honesty in "Not me" -- tongue in cheek admissions of growing older.
There is nothing better than starting a day with Alberto Rios. He reminds me to open my eyes, see compassionately the possibilities our world provides.
Take for example, "Desert Bestiary Sonnet, One".
I do not live in the SouthWest or near a desert... but I love the first line,
"Hummingbirds are quarter notes that have left the nest of the flute."
14 animals, each becoming something extraordinary -- I will never be scared of a tarantula now, knowing they are "awkward left hands in search of a piano."
Some of my favorites: "When Giving is All You Have"; "Stardust and Centuries" -- with its epigraph: "We listen for so long in our lives until one day//we push back our chairs and stand to speak".
Indeed, I sense someone who has listened long and well -- and thought hard -- imagine -- as a man, understanding "I am half woman on my mother's side." -- and then all women... and all people become candidates for beings of worth-- the products of the best we can be."
The same idea comes up in the poem, "The Who that I am" and "Hands on the Wall of a Church"
The title poem explains light... beginning with fire and ends with explaining how "the sky comes so slowly in the morning/still unsure of what is there" -- how the fire wanted to come home /with something of its own/to tell/ and it did/ a small piece of blue in its mouth."
For a glimpse at ourselves... I love the refreshing honesty in "Not me" -- tongue in cheek admissions of growing older.
There is nothing better than starting a day with Alberto Rios. He reminds me to open my eyes, see compassionately the possibilities our world provides.
November 26, 2023
"A Small Story About the Sky" isn't a story at all, but rather a collection of poems (including the eponymous introduction to Chapter 2) representing different styles and subject matter. While I was initially disappointed by the poet's failure - in my opinion - to establish a sense of place and time in this volume (Alberto Ríos is, after all, known as a "borderland" poet), the poems themselves often display the timelessness of magical realism and whimsical wordplay that ultimately made it a delightful read. My favorite poems were the Bestiary and Flora "Sonnets," which aren't sonnets by definition but rather rapid-fire observations that are playful and clever. All in all, I consider it a worthy introduction to a rightfully acclaimed contemporary poet.
November 19, 2018
In a book titled "A Small Story about the Sky," I am most struck by his many poems that speak of the U.S./Mexico border, and how his border poetry is not at all a "small story" but speaks of a topic that is a looming giant, a story about division and heartbreak.
"We seem to live in a world of maps:
But in truth we live in a world made
Not of paper and ink but of people.
Those lines are our lives. Together.
Let us turn the map until we see clearly:
The border is what joins us,
Not what separates us."
an excerpt from Border LInes
"We seem to live in a world of maps:
But in truth we live in a world made
Not of paper and ink but of people.
Those lines are our lives. Together.
Let us turn the map until we see clearly:
The border is what joins us,
Not what separates us."
an excerpt from Border LInes
February 21, 2021
Poems of the American Southwest by New Mexico's poet laureate.
Rios' desert brims with life. Ludic, brash life. In your face life. And the stories it weaves. And the hopes it exults.
Until a line becomes fence and a fence becomes barrier and a barrier becomes partition and the partition turns to wall, hurdle, border. Life and hope then diminish, but persist.
Rios' desert brims with life. Ludic, brash life. In your face life. And the stories it weaves. And the hopes it exults.
Until a line becomes fence and a fence becomes barrier and a barrier becomes partition and the partition turns to wall, hurdle, border. Life and hope then diminish, but persist.
June 12, 2017
Mind you; I don't like poetry to begin with. I did not understand, nor did I retain, this book. It was a quick and easy read but the moment I moved on to the next poem, I forgot the previous.
I gave him 2 stars because I enjoyed is sonnets. They had some great lines.
I gave him 2 stars because I enjoyed is sonnets. They had some great lines.
April 19, 2020
The tree: I
Cannot see it. The leaves do not want me to
So that when I say I see the tree,
It is the leaves I am talking about.
The tree-I don't know. I don't know.
Truthfully, it could be up to anything
Cannot see it. The leaves do not want me to
So that when I say I see the tree,
It is the leaves I am talking about.
The tree-I don't know. I don't know.
Truthfully, it could be up to anything
November 26, 2019
I enjoyed most of the poems
October 6, 2020
There are several excellent poems in this collection. And many of the other poems said much, I just wasn't able to listen.
November 20, 2022
Pretty good. Loved the desert sonnets.
February 26, 2023
Stunning.
September 14, 2025
Poems about wildlife and borders.
March 22, 2017
Very well written. Elegant poetry.
January 17, 2020
All of this was good, but some of it was amazing. After ruminating on some of my favorites, I wanted to reread this and update my rating.
December 13, 2020
First Pass
The title poem for A Small Story about the Sky opens part two of the book. It isn’t the first break from couplets, which Ríos experiments with frequently throughout the book—if it’s still possible to experiment with something as ancient as the couplet—, but the break is welcome (If the pairs of lines don’t bounce, the added space can eat up the pages fast and make the book feel long).The title poem is a bit of mythology about a fire. Ríos’ bold assertion that “It burned part of the sky,” doesn’t exactly square with what I know of fires or sky, but I can almost get over that at the end two pages later—yes, small for a story—when the fire comes home with “A small piece of blue in its mouth” (41, 43). The difference between personification and the anthropomorphic fallacy might be a matter of taste.
The word “story” taps me on the shoulder and says, “Oye, you know me, cabrón. And I’m not me unless I get my complication early in the plot and someone tries to take it off me fast.” I look at story slouching there, flaco, angular bones, nearly a skeleton. “Let me be fire,” story says. “I can take it.” He scratches his gray stubble. “Or let me be the beetle,” he says and hunches his shoulders (42). Just as quickly he turns and shakes his bony ass and says, “Or I can be the scorpion.” He lifts his arms above his head and holds them ready to strike, but I give him no cause, so he drops them and shrugs. “Just let me be something long enough to feel it.” He shakes his head slowly. “A mixed metaphor is not a plot complication.”
I let story go and try to move on, but night walks up and spreads her arms.
”What about me?” she asks. “Am I not a part of sky?”
”Of course you are, querida,” I tell her, putting as much silk as I can on the d. She is mad.
”I’m always there.” She flaps her skirt, and the horizon jumps. “Morning, noon and afterthought,” she huffs. “As if dusk & dawn were strangers.”
”Darlin’,” I say. “If you’re not sky, then I’m not human.”
She lifts her left eyebrow and cocks her head, considering the possibility.
In the “Poems of Public Purpose,” I found “Border Lines/Líneas Fronterizas,” which is what I think I was looking for all along (111-2). It wasn’t a story, but it sounded true to me, and made me think I should give some of the earlier poems another look. Even the couplets.
Second Pass
Let me start over again three times, first with the title poem.A Small Story About the Sky might be a break in forms, but the duality of fire and sky seems to fit in the pairings represented by the couplets in most of the poems up until the last poem in the book.
The last poem is titled "The Broken," and it concludes, "Something is always broken./Something is always fixed" (123). Might that refer to the utterances in a poem broken into lines?
In the book's sonnets, many metaphors are made, 14-per-poem to be exact. While all that figurative language gives each line a turn, no one metaphor controls. It's a kind of roller-coaster, the length of the lines providing some some uncertainty to how far ahead the next twist will be. But the drops become as predictable as five iambs.
The topic of the line is an area of interest for Ríos who wrote, Some Thoughts on the Integrity of the Single Line in Poetry." The single line becomes prominent in the bestiary sonnets. What might keep these from being list poems are the turn within the line from the animal to the human. Ríos' commitment to keeping the turns within one line enriches the lines. The desert locale lends some coherence to the sonnets for that brief section, and then the book returns to the couplets.Sometimes the duality feels like a dichotomy, which makes the tercets of "Border Lines" a welcome release. The couplet in the epigraph could be the book's ars poetica: "A weight carried by two/weighs only half as much" (110). The break from the book's twins to this one triplet feels inter-tribal: "Let us turn the map until we see clearly:/the border is what joins us/not what separates us." The third line offers the dichotomy a third possibility beyond this book. What that looks like--the me, not me--is the paradoxical both. It is the binary multiplying as opposed to becoming divisive.
May 23, 2020
I'd prefer for a review to be somewhat objective but am afraid I'm doomed to fail on this one as I am fairly new to reading poetry and newer still to talking about it. I picked up this volume as a result of seeing Rios' "The Border: A Double Sonnet" scroll down the screen at a U2 concert 3 weeks ago. I was not disappointed. Borders are an occasionally recurring theme here but this collection has many different approaches so that I found some poems amazingly delightful (and laughed out loud on more than one occasion) and others too dense for me to even take in. Definitely a collection - and a poet - that I will revisit.
September 20, 2020
DNF. I like a lot of Rios’ work, but this collection was boring & hard to get through for me. I wanted more emotion & depth.
Best poem was “When Giving Is All We Have” (which was the reason I bought the book in the first place! Because I love that poem!)
Best poem was “When Giving Is All We Have” (which was the reason I bought the book in the first place! Because I love that poem!)
August 6, 2023
monotonous and never-ending, this collection winds up cliche and childish. the poet’s strong start gave way to a lack of artfulness by the finale, where every poem became a wasteland of desperate “us” rhetoric and unsuccessful efforts at nostalgia. bloated after swallowing flush-left couplets, i craved escape from the poems’ basic, prose-esque style. ríos’s execution was too conservative, full of ego, preachy, and dull for me. some poems struck gold, while most others fell flat.
November 30, 2018
I adore this so deeply. On every level. Helped remind me why I love words so very much. 💕
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