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Cenzontle
In this lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. These poems explore the emotional fallout of immigration, the illusion of the American dream via the fallacy of the nuclear family, the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heterosexual marriage, and the ongoing search for belonging. Finding solace in the resignation to sheer possibility, these poems challenge us to question the potential ways in which two people can interact, love, give birth, and mourn―sometimes all at once.
112 pages, Paperback
First published April 10, 2018
19 people are currently reading
875 people want to read
About the author
Marcelo Hernández Castillo
9 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 - 30 of 65 reviews
March 7, 2020
I wanted to hear the Marcelo Hernandez Castillo read his words to experience them as he expressed them. I found a Poetry.LA interview on Youtube that was truly enlightening and I felt it added a further depth or understanding to my reading.
My favorite lines come from the poem, "Fifteen Elegies"
"These are the rules you're expected to follow:
Either praise the beautiful
or praise what is left over.
Choose the one that is most like a bridge.
Soak your hands and face in it."
My favorite lines come from the poem, "Fifteen Elegies"
"These are the rules you're expected to follow:
Either praise the beautiful
or praise what is left over.
Choose the one that is most like a bridge.
Soak your hands and face in it."
January 8, 2018
In the spirit of Whitman, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo slips in silently to lie down between the bridegroom and the bride, to inhabit many bodies and many souls, between rapture and grief. "I want everything to touch me." These are poems that open borders both personal and political, a map of silences and celebrations. "You called it cutting apart/ I called it song."
February 15, 2022
If we leave our bodies now,
they will find their way back to us eventually.
They always do.
and,
Can you wash me without my body
coming apart in your hands?
Call it wound—
Call it beginning—
they will find their way back to us eventually.
They always do.
and,
Can you wash me without my body
coming apart in your hands?
Call it wound—
Call it beginning—
May 11, 2020
The title is "mockingbird," bird of so many songs, only a couple of which are not imitations. And Hernandez Castillo assumes so many of the voices. But they are more than imitations. He moves into the bodies and then he sings.
This is the effort to assume the mantle of Whitman, self-consciously, and a bit heroically. But Hernandez Castillo's America is the America of the undocumented immigrant, for whom whatever national dream might be left is tattered and tarnished. The bio note at the end tells us these poems are about "the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown body in a heteronormative marriage." This is more than Whitman! And the book ends with the images of childbirth -- so this poet goes another step farther.
The poems are fragments of images, and images repeated throughout the book, often coupled with statement. The reader must enter the images and be willing to follow them. The connections become more real as the book builds on us, or on me, and gets its power.
I spent a little time with the book when it first came out, but have returned to it while and after reading Hernandez Castillo's memoir, "Children of the Land." I don't want to say that the memoir explains the images, but rather that the time spent with that big book of prose prepares us for the poems, prepares us to understand the incredible ambition behind this work.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is writing to save his life, and in the process finds a way through his music and his imagination that we can all choose to follow. Ambition, yes, but perhaps better to say -- courage.
This is the effort to assume the mantle of Whitman, self-consciously, and a bit heroically. But Hernandez Castillo's America is the America of the undocumented immigrant, for whom whatever national dream might be left is tattered and tarnished. The bio note at the end tells us these poems are about "the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown body in a heteronormative marriage." This is more than Whitman! And the book ends with the images of childbirth -- so this poet goes another step farther.
The poems are fragments of images, and images repeated throughout the book, often coupled with statement. The reader must enter the images and be willing to follow them. The connections become more real as the book builds on us, or on me, and gets its power.
I spent a little time with the book when it first came out, but have returned to it while and after reading Hernandez Castillo's memoir, "Children of the Land." I don't want to say that the memoir explains the images, but rather that the time spent with that big book of prose prepares us for the poems, prepares us to understand the incredible ambition behind this work.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is writing to save his life, and in the process finds a way through his music and his imagination that we can all choose to follow. Ambition, yes, but perhaps better to say -- courage.
Read
September 9, 2023read for class.
kids, don’t ever commodify your hobby.
kids, don’t ever commodify your hobby.
March 25, 2018
As "The bird flew before there was a word for flight" so to soars the tenderness of this debut. Cenzontle is a book of honey and wings, a darkness that sprawls at a low and insistent volume. "Masterful" comes to mind, so to "Brilliant" or "Fresh", each an understatement. Rather, suffice to say that in a spectacular year of poetry in a wider golden age of poetry, Castillo has written one of the year's most necessary debuts.
March 6, 2018
perfecto
November 23, 2019
Would I had known, the note at the end would have come first, and the introduction would have been the end.
"Cenzontle means mockingbird in Spanish and comes from the Nahuatl word centzuntli, which refers to one who holds 400 voices or songs.
From the back of the book: "...the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage."
So yes, 400 voices or songs. So yes, we contain multitudes.
While I was still hoping for more, here's what I liked:
"Perhaps the butterflies are mute because
no one would believe their terrible stories."
-from Immigration Interview With Don Francisco; pg. 21
"What if we tell him
there's nothing wrong with him,
that he's only dying?"
-from Rituals of Healing; pg. 38
"Dear judges,
none of you can imagine
that incredible amount of money
it costs to be poor."
-from Sub-Erotica Papers; pg. 76
"Consider the octopus.
If you too had three hearts
would you
want one to keep you alive
while the other two split you in half?"
-from Rima: Notes and Observations pg. 95-96
"What if they died not because they stung
but because they grew tired of stinging?"
-from Origin of Glass; pg. 99
I checked this out of the library many times. I'm glad I finally read it.
"Cenzontle means mockingbird in Spanish and comes from the Nahuatl word centzuntli, which refers to one who holds 400 voices or songs.
From the back of the book: "...the latent anxieties of living in a queer brown undocumented body within a heteronormative marriage."
So yes, 400 voices or songs. So yes, we contain multitudes.
While I was still hoping for more, here's what I liked:
"Perhaps the butterflies are mute because
no one would believe their terrible stories."
-from Immigration Interview With Don Francisco; pg. 21
"What if we tell him
there's nothing wrong with him,
that he's only dying?"
-from Rituals of Healing; pg. 38
"Dear judges,
none of you can imagine
that incredible amount of money
it costs to be poor."
-from Sub-Erotica Papers; pg. 76
"Consider the octopus.
If you too had three hearts
would you
want one to keep you alive
while the other two split you in half?"
-from Rima: Notes and Observations pg. 95-96
"What if they died not because they stung
but because they grew tired of stinging?"
-from Origin of Glass; pg. 99
I checked this out of the library many times. I'm glad I finally read it.
July 8, 2022
Some of these poems are fascinating, and some of them went right over my head. There were handfuls of really bright, sharp lines and phrases and poems surrounded by others that seemed to want to be unclear. This is also a collection where I'm not always sure why the spacing is the way it is.
"Half of you raptured in song, / the other half /
a biography of grief / wholly unknown to me-- /
a sea of individual tremblings."
and "our mouths / moving along
the walls / of each other then / he was lonely / again He smiled / darling / limbed thing" are beautiful. (Also loved the flow and feel of "The rain outside Toledo had that thick / Midwestern glue to it.")
"Your menstrual blood is thick and ancient as olives or bells." is, eurgh.
"Half of you raptured in song, / the other half /
a biography of grief / wholly unknown to me-- /
a sea of individual tremblings."
and "our mouths / moving along
the walls / of each other then / he was lonely / again He smiled / darling / limbed thing" are beautiful. (Also loved the flow and feel of "The rain outside Toledo had that thick / Midwestern glue to it.")
"Your menstrual blood is thick and ancient as olives or bells." is, eurgh.
March 13, 2021
Really a fantastic collection of poetry. I listened to his memoir (Children of the Land) last year and it was one of my fave reads of 2020, so I knew I would be blown away. Some of my fave poems were: Cezontle, Immigration Interview w Don Francisco, Sugar, 15 Elegies, Immigration Interview w Jay Leno, Drown, Gesture and Pursuit, Miss Lonelyhearts, Sub-erotica Papers, & Love Poem: A Nocturne
June 18, 2025
this is one of those books of poetry that makes you feel like you're being flayed apart by shards of light and all you can say is thank you
June 12, 2021
Loved this book of poetry. ♥️ Read this with the author’s novel, Children of the Land - also excellent!
August 8, 2023
takes the air right out of you
November 10, 2018
This book comes with strong recommendations—the forward from Brenda Shaughnessy is incredibly flattering, saying things like “I find myself speechless as I endeavor to write an introduction to this book of poems,” and “My note merely aims to say that I emerged from this book in silence, in awe, with gratitude, and have yet to give name to its immensity.” These are powerful words, and I have to admit that I don’t share her enthusiasm.
There are some really incredible lines to be found in almost every single poem, many of which are cited in the positive reviews, and some others that aren’t:
The description of a field worker: “I don’t know English / but there is so little / that needs translated out here” (“Esparto, California” 22)
“In the field of onions / Amá’s eyes have blossomed— / hanging from the petals, / and she, so far away, / unable to blink / wondering / where so much color could possibly come from” (“Chronology of Undocumented Mothers” 27).
The descriptions of an abusive father: “And after it’s over, we know we have both become me. / Him for the beating, / and me for taking his beating. / I love you Daisy. / My father’s hands will love a man / at the first sign of weakness. / I am weak / therefore, I gather that he loves me” (“Sugar” 35-36).
I feel like there’s something I am missing. The hype on this book is so strong, and he name drops some other great authors in his acknowledgements (Eduardo Corral, Javier Zamora, Tarfia Faizullah). Hernandez Castillo is reaching for something new, but I felt like many of these poems just don't come together or that they could have been shorter. They’re not strictly narrative, which is fine—Corral’s Slow Lighting is a recent example of how the surreal can creep into poems to great effect--but some of the disruptive lines or sections didn’t really seem to add anything. In some cases, they really took away (“I’m only saying what you want to hear. / You’ve heard every variation before. / Nothing happens twice. / Nothing / happens / twice” in “Origin of Drowning or Crossing the Rio Bravo” 18). Similarly, sometimes his line breaks and spacing on the page was well done, and added layers, and at other times it just seemed unnecessary and distracting.
The poems about parents (both mother and fatherhood), in particular, stand out. I also appreciate how, although many of these poem titles refer to immigration, they are not simply direct border crossing narratives. This sort of departure from expectations and abstraction is very different from what Hernandez Castillo writes about matrimony.
The book’s back cover mentions several themes from the book (such as immigration, toxic masculinity, and being a queer man in a heterosexual marriage). I think my issues with this book mostly come down to the fact that I really didn’t find his poems about the disintegration of marriage to be as compelling as how he wrote about other topics. Other topics throughout Cenzontle are treated delicately, but end-of-marriage poems like the majority of “Nuclear Fictions,” as well as “Bi-glyph,” among others, were incredibly heavy handed.
I will look for Hernandez Castillo’s work in the future, because I think he has all the tools. I just think that maybe this book could have been a bit shorter, or maybe such incredible hype did it no favors.
There are some really incredible lines to be found in almost every single poem, many of which are cited in the positive reviews, and some others that aren’t:
The description of a field worker: “I don’t know English / but there is so little / that needs translated out here” (“Esparto, California” 22)
“In the field of onions / Amá’s eyes have blossomed— / hanging from the petals, / and she, so far away, / unable to blink / wondering / where so much color could possibly come from” (“Chronology of Undocumented Mothers” 27).
The descriptions of an abusive father: “And after it’s over, we know we have both become me. / Him for the beating, / and me for taking his beating. / I love you Daisy. / My father’s hands will love a man / at the first sign of weakness. / I am weak / therefore, I gather that he loves me” (“Sugar” 35-36).
I feel like there’s something I am missing. The hype on this book is so strong, and he name drops some other great authors in his acknowledgements (Eduardo Corral, Javier Zamora, Tarfia Faizullah). Hernandez Castillo is reaching for something new, but I felt like many of these poems just don't come together or that they could have been shorter. They’re not strictly narrative, which is fine—Corral’s Slow Lighting is a recent example of how the surreal can creep into poems to great effect--but some of the disruptive lines or sections didn’t really seem to add anything. In some cases, they really took away (“I’m only saying what you want to hear. / You’ve heard every variation before. / Nothing happens twice. / Nothing / happens / twice” in “Origin of Drowning or Crossing the Rio Bravo” 18). Similarly, sometimes his line breaks and spacing on the page was well done, and added layers, and at other times it just seemed unnecessary and distracting.
The poems about parents (both mother and fatherhood), in particular, stand out. I also appreciate how, although many of these poem titles refer to immigration, they are not simply direct border crossing narratives. This sort of departure from expectations and abstraction is very different from what Hernandez Castillo writes about matrimony.
The book’s back cover mentions several themes from the book (such as immigration, toxic masculinity, and being a queer man in a heterosexual marriage). I think my issues with this book mostly come down to the fact that I really didn’t find his poems about the disintegration of marriage to be as compelling as how he wrote about other topics. Other topics throughout Cenzontle are treated delicately, but end-of-marriage poems like the majority of “Nuclear Fictions,” as well as “Bi-glyph,” among others, were incredibly heavy handed.
I will look for Hernandez Castillo’s work in the future, because I think he has all the tools. I just think that maybe this book could have been a bit shorter, or maybe such incredible hype did it no favors.
October 1, 2018
Castillo is a box checker with some talent. I found several interesting segments, but not a complete poem I consider noteworthy.
the echo
and its echo
and its shape
- "Cenzontle"
We traffic in the leftovers of ecstasy.
- "Esparto, California"
Either way it's a terrible future.
It's a movie where no one seems interested in the ending.
the echo
and its echo
and its shape
- "Cenzontle"
We traffic in the leftovers of ecstasy.
- "Esparto, California"
Either way it's a terrible future.
It's a movie where no one seems interested in the ending.
August 9, 2018
Here is my truth: I don’t read poetry often, but I wish I did. I want to be that person who reads poems and religious texts and essays on important cultural topics regularly. And it’s not because I think that sort of person is better or more serious. No, I just know that when I read more widely, because I had to (school, for so many years), I was a more interesting on the inside. I absorbed it all and tried on different ways of thinking and my dreams were varied and colorful.
So every now and then I try to make myself into that person again. I try. I read poetry, I linger on a prayer, and I purchase a book of essays. And when I do, I sometimes come across a text that is… abstruse? I can’t get into it at all, though I enjoy the language and drink in the words with my eyes. They just end up traveling right through me without leaving a permanent mark. When I read novels, if they are any good, they scoop out my feelings with a spoon, and that is its own delightful pain/pleasure. I return to that over and over. Lighting up my brain with poetry takes more effort (usually), and I am loath to loan myself the time if the pleasure is fleeting. In this case I took as long as I needed to. And my reading experience turned into something meaningful.
I asked my library to order Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s volume of award-winning poetry, Cenzontle, because I read a lovely review of it in Shelf Awareness. And then, because I kept it so long, the library declared it lost (don’t worry, I eventually returned it). I finished it, and though I don’t think I “got” all of it (poetry is hard), I enjoyed it. I tried. I am maybe becoming the person I want to be. I adored the way Hernandez Castillo’s words made me play with mine (even here in this “review”), and I’ll be amazed by the vivid dreams I’m probably going to have for the next few weeks because those words painted the inside of my brain in electric neon.
Hernandez Castillo writes about growing up, and sex, and birth and death, and birds and honey and words and dreams. He writes about having a brown body, and sorrow (unrelated)(?), and being an undocumented immigrant. His poems are peppered with prayers, and internal/external juxtapositions. Maybe I didn’t absorb it all, but I could appreciate the lyricism and flights of fancy and maybe I understood a few metaphors. I understood enough to like, to keep reading. I think it was beautiful. I kept rereading one line here, maybe two, pondering if that one or this one was something I’d copy down and keep. Okay, I know it was beautiful.
God, I don’t have anything else to say. Read that Shelf Awareness review. Read the book yourself (it’s compact). Let me know what you think of it. I am going to work on reading more poetry and I plan to come back to Cenzontle again. I’ll even buy my own copy this time so that the library doesn’t think it’s lost.
So every now and then I try to make myself into that person again. I try. I read poetry, I linger on a prayer, and I purchase a book of essays. And when I do, I sometimes come across a text that is… abstruse? I can’t get into it at all, though I enjoy the language and drink in the words with my eyes. They just end up traveling right through me without leaving a permanent mark. When I read novels, if they are any good, they scoop out my feelings with a spoon, and that is its own delightful pain/pleasure. I return to that over and over. Lighting up my brain with poetry takes more effort (usually), and I am loath to loan myself the time if the pleasure is fleeting. In this case I took as long as I needed to. And my reading experience turned into something meaningful.
I asked my library to order Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s volume of award-winning poetry, Cenzontle, because I read a lovely review of it in Shelf Awareness. And then, because I kept it so long, the library declared it lost (don’t worry, I eventually returned it). I finished it, and though I don’t think I “got” all of it (poetry is hard), I enjoyed it. I tried. I am maybe becoming the person I want to be. I adored the way Hernandez Castillo’s words made me play with mine (even here in this “review”), and I’ll be amazed by the vivid dreams I’m probably going to have for the next few weeks because those words painted the inside of my brain in electric neon.
Hernandez Castillo writes about growing up, and sex, and birth and death, and birds and honey and words and dreams. He writes about having a brown body, and sorrow (unrelated)(?), and being an undocumented immigrant. His poems are peppered with prayers, and internal/external juxtapositions. Maybe I didn’t absorb it all, but I could appreciate the lyricism and flights of fancy and maybe I understood a few metaphors. I understood enough to like, to keep reading. I think it was beautiful. I kept rereading one line here, maybe two, pondering if that one or this one was something I’d copy down and keep. Okay, I know it was beautiful.
God, I don’t have anything else to say. Read that Shelf Awareness review. Read the book yourself (it’s compact). Let me know what you think of it. I am going to work on reading more poetry and I plan to come back to Cenzontle again. I’ll even buy my own copy this time so that the library doesn’t think it’s lost.
March 13, 2019
This book well deserves recently making finalist in the Bisexual Poetry category of the Lambda Literary Awards. Like Vietnamese-American poet Duy Doan's We Play a Game, another finalist in the same category, it deals with the first-generation immigrant experience (including the experience of being beaten by one's parents) and bisexuality, among other topics. In fact, the two books make a good double-feature read.
Cenzontle is lyrical, beautiful, moving, reasonably accessible, and very much in touch with Latinx cultural and linguistic roots. I look forward to reading more work by this poet.
Cenzontle is lyrical, beautiful, moving, reasonably accessible, and very much in touch with Latinx cultural and linguistic roots. I look forward to reading more work by this poet.
March 27, 2019
A stunning collection. Some of my favorite moments follow:
"Each pepper field is the same. / In each one I am a failed anthem."
"the white and the blue and the white again / as if everything's on trial, which it is. / The judge. The witness. / The lion climbing the window / into the orchard without being seen. / The orchid where they are both lost and found again."
"I made him a necklace out of the bees that have died in my yard. / How good it must have felt before the small village / echoed its grief in his throat; before the sirens began ringing. / How fallow their scripture. / Perhaps we were on stage which meant it was a show, / which meant our only definition of a flower was also a flower."
"Yes, we drowned, then changed our minds, / then drowned again, / because we could, / because no one would know the difference — / a leaf to its trembling / when it is no longer a leaf / but just a trembling."
"Each pepper field is the same. / In each one I am a failed anthem."
"the white and the blue and the white again / as if everything's on trial, which it is. / The judge. The witness. / The lion climbing the window / into the orchard without being seen. / The orchid where they are both lost and found again."
"I made him a necklace out of the bees that have died in my yard. / How good it must have felt before the small village / echoed its grief in his throat; before the sirens began ringing. / How fallow their scripture. / Perhaps we were on stage which meant it was a show, / which meant our only definition of a flower was also a flower."
"Yes, we drowned, then changed our minds, / then drowned again, / because we could, / because no one would know the difference — / a leaf to its trembling / when it is no longer a leaf / but just a trembling."
April 9, 2020
What a dream state we enter; what imagination and artistry in every line. These beautiful poems stopped me in my tracks so many times. Some of my favorite moments:
You called it cutting apart, I called it song.
If only I could choose what hurt.
A flock of birds crawled out of your mouth
I imagine myself running naked through a room pretending that I am two lamps falling over.
I don’t know what it means to name a child.
everything had the aftertaste of gasoline.
I am thirsty. It’s called unbuckling.
If I can still close, I will let the rain finish what the light began and never tell anyone about it.
I’m trying to make you believe we are deer drinking water at the pond.
The bones unhinged at the same speed as the branches.
I’m going to open the borders of my hunger and call it a parade.
You called it cutting apart, I called it song.
If only I could choose what hurt.
A flock of birds crawled out of your mouth
I imagine myself running naked through a room pretending that I am two lamps falling over.
I don’t know what it means to name a child.
everything had the aftertaste of gasoline.
I am thirsty. It’s called unbuckling.
If I can still close, I will let the rain finish what the light began and never tell anyone about it.
I’m trying to make you believe we are deer drinking water at the pond.
The bones unhinged at the same speed as the branches.
I’m going to open the borders of my hunger and call it a parade.
January 27, 2020
I picked this book up because the author's story interested me...but find myself in the minority so far as reviews go.
Throughout the first half of the book, I struggled to maintain interest in the poems. I debated continuing to see if I could muster up some interest... But after several more poems I decided that it would be disingenuous of me to continue reading just for the sake of "finishing" the book.
Poetry is meant to be enjoyed, or to be captivating. So since I found it to be neither of those things, I abandoned this book.
Throughout the first half of the book, I struggled to maintain interest in the poems. I debated continuing to see if I could muster up some interest... But after several more poems I decided that it would be disingenuous of me to continue reading just for the sake of "finishing" the book.
Poetry is meant to be enjoyed, or to be captivating. So since I found it to be neither of those things, I abandoned this book.
August 15, 2022
This was such a delicate and lyrical collection of poems with recurring, ephemeral images and themes to guide the reader through Hernandez Castillo’s world. We flutter across borders of many kinds, leaving much for the reader to unpack. Some poems were easier to grasp than others; most of them were incredibly abstract in nature. I was enchanted and haunted from start to end, though.
Some favorites: all the “Origin of…” poems, “Cenzontle,” “Fifteen Elegies,” “Bi-Glyph,” “Miss Lonelyhearts,” and “How to Grow the Brightest Geranium”
Read for the Sealey Challenge.
Some favorites: all the “Origin of…” poems, “Cenzontle,” “Fifteen Elegies,” “Bi-Glyph,” “Miss Lonelyhearts,” and “How to Grow the Brightest Geranium”
Read for the Sealey Challenge.
August 7, 2018
Due to high praise from a friend- shout out to Lindsey-I picked up this book and dove head first into this book. It was like diving into a waterfall that flows to open ocean. I am do not have a lot of practice with poetry books but Cenzontle is worth the ride. Throughout the day my mind drifts back to the imagery and surrealism Hernandez Castillo uses to evoke themes of love, lust, and trauma. It is unique and refreshing- and makes me work to understand and piece together.
February 27, 2020
Such perfectly sketched lines of poetry--always seeming to hide just around the corner as you approach them. Castillo is doubly brave by existing openly in two persecuted groups. One status is as a queer person (discussed openly in this book) and the other is as an undocumented resident of the US (not discussed openly). With all those complications, these poems still come across simple, open, and mysterious.
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July 13, 2023I don't feel right giving this a rating, I know little to nothing about poetry. I listened to and read the author's book Children of the Land, which I loved. So I thought I would try his poetry. I think I understand some of what he is doing and there are some very evocative passages that I liked but I am sure that I am missing something very important. Perhaps another reading and a poetry class for me.
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May 3, 2020lots to unpack here!!! not going to rate it bc i’m still feeling out my taste for poetry and honestly i may have to revisit this collection later. all in all, enjoyed and felt his words deeply - i just dont have the words yet to articulate what exactly i felt reading these poems. excited to read more.
August 13, 2024
Stunning lyrical Latinx brilliance, layers of life, language, immigration, sexuality, earth, all with a poets attention to subverting language—particularly that of the Mexican-American immigrant, the dreamer, the marginalizing language thrown onto the wild and beautiful body of the speaker. 10/10 recommend, goddamn!!
March 2, 2025
I’m not always sure how to relate to poetry. I could tell in Cenzontle that the writing was quite beautiful, but it was so fragmented that I couldn’t necessarily follow. Still, a good, if challenging read.
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[gesture of the displaced]
I want to believe this will end / with thousands watching / and throwing roses at us / with lights and glitter in our hair. / But we know how this ends- / we practice over and over until we don’t / need to tell our bodies how to do it.
…
[gesture of the displaced]
I want to believe this will end / with thousands watching / and throwing roses at us / with lights and glitter in our hair. / But we know how this ends- / we practice over and over until we don’t / need to tell our bodies how to do it.
July 23, 2019
Gorgeous: tough and tender, poems with bite and softness. Learned a lot on how to skilfully interweave recurring imagery throughout a whole collection & creating poems as little narrative journeys. Also, so many of these poems had such a beautiful music to them. Will reread in the future!
October 6, 2024
so many fantastic turns of phrase, fresh observations on love/lust and violence and the solace of prayer. often felt a bit repetitive so not my favorite as a whole collection, but gives you a lot to consider and return to
January 4, 2026
I don't think graphic violence or homosexual sex is my thing. I didn't enjoy this for the most part but there were just enough interesting images and word choices to have me read to the end, although I skipped some parts.
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