Adobe Odes

by Pat Mora

Wine-sipping syllables, a communion of bones, impetuous pinches of chile, and parrot-sassy guacamole. With a mélange of aromas and tastes, colors and sounds, award-winning poet Pat Mora invites readers into her home in this new collection of forty-nine odes. Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s Odas Elemantales and reinvented with a Latina identity, Mora celebrates the ordinary in lyrics that are anything but. Her poetry is the poetry of space—house patterns and adobe constructions—and the human rhythms that happen inside. It is also the poetry of what she loves—chocolate, books, dandelions, church bells, hope, courage, and even rain. Thick with the microcultures of foodstuffs, family, places, regions, deities, spirits, and literary figures, Mora’s adobe universe is luscious and tactile, elemental and dynamic.

From family gossip and beauty secrets, to women darning hand-me-downs, to reluctant hands carrying bodies across borders, Mora traverses the tangled threads of culture, community, family, gender, and injustice. Her vivid observations together with her deft handling of symmetry and meter make her poetry uniquely insightful, subtle, and elegant. Sprinkled with Spanish and plenty of spice, each ode is a sensory flurry of mind and body. Together they make a cauldron of flavorful, simmering language. They are meant to be savored as they slowly stir the soul.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Pat Mora (born 1942) is a female Mexican-American author and poet. Pat Mora was born in El Paso, Texas. She is married and has 3 grown children.

Reviews

[R.S. Kellogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hadn't read poetry in a while and wanted to try some, so I picked up this book on a whim at the library. The smattering of Spanish mixed with English and the rich poetic descriptions of domestic life, family, and the nature of common things and people around us reminded me of Like Water for Chocolate.

Beautiful free-style verses, a quick read. Loved it, especially the poems on family.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Mora's latest, and it is amazing! This is perhaps my favorite so far.

[Erin Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful meditative book of wafting incense images that seep into the soul and settle to brood...

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely beautiful. I've pulled this book off my shelf time and again to get lost in her melodic, southwestern-flavored odes

[Jason · Rating 2 out of 5]

I adore Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things, and I also really enjoyed Gary Soto's Neighborhood Odes, so I had to try Pat Mora's twist on the ode format. Overall, the poems just didn't jive with my taste. Too many times, they felt forced or unfinished, like the ah-ha moment was lacking. I'll admit that her use of indents also bothered me as they didn't seem to add much to the poems.

"Ode to an Apple" was one of the few poems I really liked.