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Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize
Dulce: Poems
The poems in Dulce are at once confession and elegy that admit the speaker’s attempt and possible failure to reconcile intimacy toward another and toward the self. The collection what’s the point in any of this?— meaning, what’s the use of longing beyond pleasure; what’s the use of looking for an origin if we already know the ending?
Surreal and deeply imagistic, the poems map a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo invites the reader to confront and challenge the distinctions of borders and categories, and in doing so, he obscures and negates such divisions. He allows for the possibility of an and in a world of either/or .
These poems enact a prescient anxiety of what is to come, “I want to say all of this is true / but we both know it isn’t. . . . We already know what’s at the other end of this.” Dulce is truly a lyrical force rife with the rich language of longing and regret that disturbs even the most serene quiet.
Surreal and deeply imagistic, the poems map a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality. Marcelo Hernandez Castillo invites the reader to confront and challenge the distinctions of borders and categories, and in doing so, he obscures and negates such divisions. He allows for the possibility of an and in a world of either/or .
These poems enact a prescient anxiety of what is to come, “I want to say all of this is true / but we both know it isn’t. . . . We already know what’s at the other end of this.” Dulce is truly a lyrical force rife with the rich language of longing and regret that disturbs even the most serene quiet.
56 pages, Paperback
Published April 15, 2018
1 person is currently reading
170 people want to read
About the author
Marcelo Hernández Castillo
8 books130 followersMarcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of Cenzontle, which was chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as the winner of the 2017 A. Poulin, Jr. Prize published by BOA editions in 2018, as well as the winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writer Award for poetry, the 2019 Golden Poppy Award from the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, and the Bronze in the FOREWORD INDIE best book of the year. Cenzontle is also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, the California Book Award, the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and the Northern California Book Award. Cenzontle was listed among one of NPR's and the New York Public Library top picks of 2018. His first chapbook, DULCE, won the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize published by Northwestern University press. His memoir, Children of the Land is forthcoming from Harper Collins in 2020.
He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated to the California central valley. As an AB540 student, he earned his B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award. He has helped to establish The Undocupoet Fellowship which provides funding to help curb the cost of submissions to journals and contests for undocumented writers.
He is the translator of the Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman and is currently at work translating the poems of the contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy. He co-translated the work of the Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe with C.D. Wright before her untimely passing.
His work has been adopted to opera through collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya and has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, PBS Newshour, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast, New England Review, People Magazine, and Indiana Review, among others.
A graduate of the Canto Mundo Latinx Poetry fellowship, he has also received fellowships to attend the Vermont Studio Center and the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. He teaches at the Ashland Low-Res MFA Program and teaches poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in Northern California.
He was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated to the California central valley. As an AB540 student, he earned his B.A. from Sacramento State University and was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. He is a founding member of the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award. He has helped to establish The Undocupoet Fellowship which provides funding to help curb the cost of submissions to journals and contests for undocumented writers.
He is the translator of the Argentinian modernist poet, Jacobo Fijman and is currently at work translating the poems of the contemporary Mexican Peruvian poet Yaxkin Melchy. He co-translated the work of the Mexican poet Marcelo Uribe with C.D. Wright before her untimely passing.
His work has been adopted to opera through collaboration with the composer Reinaldo Moya and has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, PBS Newshour, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast, New England Review, People Magazine, and Indiana Review, among others.
A graduate of the Canto Mundo Latinx Poetry fellowship, he has also received fellowships to attend the Vermont Studio Center and the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. He teaches at the Ashland Low-Res MFA Program and teaches poetry workshops for incarcerated youth in Northern California.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 22, 2022
"years from now / there will be a name / for what you and I are doing"
Dulce is trauma turned in on itself to become beautiful and edible. Castillo promises an opening of doubt, but builds a sanctuary of working to understand the traumed self, playing with the unreliable entities of memory, desire, parenthood and the world.
I found myself opening and closing with this collection. I came to understand the ways that I was relating to the speaker and how doubt dribbles itself through this work and my own life. This collection was tightly wound. While the poetry wants to be encased in doubt, it left me with no questions and gave me answers to subjects I had not considered. I highly recommend this work to anyone looking for something.
Dulce is trauma turned in on itself to become beautiful and edible. Castillo promises an opening of doubt, but builds a sanctuary of working to understand the traumed self, playing with the unreliable entities of memory, desire, parenthood and the world.
I found myself opening and closing with this collection. I came to understand the ways that I was relating to the speaker and how doubt dribbles itself through this work and my own life. This collection was tightly wound. While the poetry wants to be encased in doubt, it left me with no questions and gave me answers to subjects I had not considered. I highly recommend this work to anyone looking for something.
November 28, 2021
Most (if not all) of these poems also appear in Castillo's other collection, Cenzontle. However, there are slight differences to each poem between Dulce and Cenzontle, and Cenzontle features several poems which do not appear in Dulce. I personally love seeing how poets edit and reimagine their own work, and I don't often receive the opportunity to do so.
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August 13, 2020Dulce is strange and hard and sweet, tender language and beautiful imagery tackling the pain and beauty and violence and lust of life, mixing religion and culture with desire, twining past and present and acknowledging that the future will bring with it new words.
October 5, 2022
“Perhaps the butterflies are mute because no one would believe their terrible stories,” Immigration Interview with Don Francisco
August 16, 2025
My favorite poem was Wetback. Made me think of my dad.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews