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The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry
The Wind Shifts gathers, for the first time, works by emerging Latino and Latina poets in the twenty-first century. Here readers will discover 25 new and vital voices including Naomi Ayala, Richard Blanco, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sheryl Luna, and Urayoán Noel. All of the writers included in this volume have published poetry in well-regarded literary magazines. Some have published chapbooks or first collections, but none had published more than one book at the time of selection. This results in a freshness that energizes the enterprise.
Certainly there is poetry here that is political, but this is not a polemical book; it is a poetry book. While conscious of their roots, the artists are equally conscious of living in the contemporary world—fully engaged with the possibilities of subject and language. The variety is tantalizing. There are sonnets and a sestina; poems about traveling and living overseas; poems rooted in the natural world and poems embedded in suburbia; poems nourished by life on the U.S.–Mexico border and poems electrified by living in Chicago or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City.
Some of the poetry is traditional; some is avant-garde; some is informed by traditional poetry in Spanish; some follows English forms that are hundreds of years old. There are love poems, spells that defy logic, flashes of hope, and moments of loss. In short, this is the rich and varied poetry of young, talented North American Latinos and Latinas.
Certainly there is poetry here that is political, but this is not a polemical book; it is a poetry book. While conscious of their roots, the artists are equally conscious of living in the contemporary world—fully engaged with the possibilities of subject and language. The variety is tantalizing. There are sonnets and a sestina; poems about traveling and living overseas; poems rooted in the natural world and poems embedded in suburbia; poems nourished by life on the U.S.–Mexico border and poems electrified by living in Chicago or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City.
Some of the poetry is traditional; some is avant-garde; some is informed by traditional poetry in Spanish; some follows English forms that are hundreds of years old. There are love poems, spells that defy logic, flashes of hope, and moments of loss. In short, this is the rich and varied poetry of young, talented North American Latinos and Latinas.
- GenresPoetryAnthologies
259 pages, Paperback
First published April 5, 2007
3 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Francisco Aragón
18 books7 followersFrancisco Aragón (1968) is a Latino poet, editor and writer.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 9, 2019
A good mix of young(er) Latinx poets from around the US (Chicago, NYC, CA, TX, etc), pretty equally split between men and women which was nice. Of the 24 poets included, I'd only read one of them before. I can't say I found any new favorites in this anthology, but I appreciated the collection.
Rosa Alcala
Francisco Aragon
Naomi Ayala
Richard Blanco
Brenda Cardenas
Albino Carrillo
Steven Cordova
Eduardo C. Corral
David Dominguez
John Olivares Espinoza
Gina Franco
Venessa Maria Engel-Fuentes
Kevin A. Gonzalez
David Hernandez
Scott Inguito
Sheryl Luna
Carl Marcum
Maria Melendez
Carolina Monsivais
Adela Najarro
Urayoán Noel
Deborah Parédez
Emmy Pérez
Paul Martínez Pompa
Lidia Torres
Rosa Alcala
Francisco Aragon
Naomi Ayala
Richard Blanco
Brenda Cardenas
Albino Carrillo
Steven Cordova
Eduardo C. Corral
David Dominguez
John Olivares Espinoza
Gina Franco
Venessa Maria Engel-Fuentes
Kevin A. Gonzalez
David Hernandez
Scott Inguito
Sheryl Luna
Carl Marcum
Maria Melendez
Carolina Monsivais
Adela Najarro
Urayoán Noel
Deborah Parédez
Emmy Pérez
Paul Martínez Pompa
Lidia Torres
October 22, 2024
There are some beautiful poems in this, hidden gem
October 14, 2010
I appreciate Francisco Aragón's effort at "expanding borders" with this anthology. Certainly, the theme of "borders" is important to Chicano and Latino poets, given this country's history of expansion and ongoing simultaneous admitting and disallowing of Chicano and Latino bodies across the USA/Mexico border.
Aragón does a good job of outlining his project, keeping the process transparent, revealing its limitations, going so far as to include the names of poets whom he'd hoped to include (but couldn't for various reasons of communication and delays), as well as more poets he'd learned about later on (too late to include in this project). As well, he places the work within particular historical contexts -- Chicano/Latino poetry movements as well as those in American poetry. He includes an epigraph from Gloria Anzaldua's monumental BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA; it is from this epigraph that the anthology's title comes.
His premise that the current state of Latino poetry owes much to the highly politicized Chicano Movement is valid and helpful in reading the work here. It's apparent in Sheryl Luna's precisely punctuated and structured "Her Back, My Bridge," a poem giving tribute to a woman elder (grandmother?), and whose title references Cheri Moraga's and Gloria Anzaldua's THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK, Writings by Radical Women of Color, or in how Albino Carillo's long poem of New Mexican workers' lives is reminiscent of Jimmy Santiago Baca and Rudolfo Anaya. So here, younger poets are building upon what's been established by ancestors, considering the previous generations, i.e. the importance of the foundations of Latino poetry.
Aragón discusses younger poets who engage in "experimentation," and here, I think of poets such as Paul Martinez Pompa, whose "While Late Capitalism," enacts upon the page the suffocation and crush of migrant workers' bodies in an abandoned trailer in the desert. Aragón also discusses the poets' relationships with Spanish and English as a recurring theme, and calls attention to Urayoán Noel as a fully bilingual (and bi-literate) poet, code switching, translating, (also writing about late capitalism) in the Puerto Rican traditional poetic form, the décima. I'm interested in the theme of late capitalism and what it means to have this theme explored in the anthology. So it's these blendings of traditional poetic form with "new" uses of language and multilingualism, or political themes explored in "experimental" forms, and tribute to poetic forebears.
With this in mind, Juan Felipe Herrera's foreword is apt. His description of this project as sensorium and vortex I appreciate. It speaks to the relative diversity of the poets' aesthetics and treatment of subject matter, as well as the inability to pin down one safe and limiting definition of contemporary Latino poetry. As well, Herrera discusses the "contraction" rather than expansion of borders. Here, he's talking about that lyric I and individuals' microhistories and herstories.
My one criticism is the absence of mention of the Nuyorican Poets in Aragón's introduction. I am sure the Nuyoricans strongly inform members of this emerging generation of Latino poets.
Aragón does a good job of outlining his project, keeping the process transparent, revealing its limitations, going so far as to include the names of poets whom he'd hoped to include (but couldn't for various reasons of communication and delays), as well as more poets he'd learned about later on (too late to include in this project). As well, he places the work within particular historical contexts -- Chicano/Latino poetry movements as well as those in American poetry. He includes an epigraph from Gloria Anzaldua's monumental BORDERLANDS/LA FRONTERA; it is from this epigraph that the anthology's title comes.
His premise that the current state of Latino poetry owes much to the highly politicized Chicano Movement is valid and helpful in reading the work here. It's apparent in Sheryl Luna's precisely punctuated and structured "Her Back, My Bridge," a poem giving tribute to a woman elder (grandmother?), and whose title references Cheri Moraga's and Gloria Anzaldua's THIS BRIDGE CALLED MY BACK, Writings by Radical Women of Color, or in how Albino Carillo's long poem of New Mexican workers' lives is reminiscent of Jimmy Santiago Baca and Rudolfo Anaya. So here, younger poets are building upon what's been established by ancestors, considering the previous generations, i.e. the importance of the foundations of Latino poetry.
Aragón discusses younger poets who engage in "experimentation," and here, I think of poets such as Paul Martinez Pompa, whose "While Late Capitalism," enacts upon the page the suffocation and crush of migrant workers' bodies in an abandoned trailer in the desert. Aragón also discusses the poets' relationships with Spanish and English as a recurring theme, and calls attention to Urayoán Noel as a fully bilingual (and bi-literate) poet, code switching, translating, (also writing about late capitalism) in the Puerto Rican traditional poetic form, the décima. I'm interested in the theme of late capitalism and what it means to have this theme explored in the anthology. So it's these blendings of traditional poetic form with "new" uses of language and multilingualism, or political themes explored in "experimental" forms, and tribute to poetic forebears.
With this in mind, Juan Felipe Herrera's foreword is apt. His description of this project as sensorium and vortex I appreciate. It speaks to the relative diversity of the poets' aesthetics and treatment of subject matter, as well as the inability to pin down one safe and limiting definition of contemporary Latino poetry. As well, Herrera discusses the "contraction" rather than expansion of borders. Here, he's talking about that lyric I and individuals' microhistories and herstories.
My one criticism is the absence of mention of the Nuyorican Poets in Aragón's introduction. I am sure the Nuyoricans strongly inform members of this emerging generation of Latino poets.
February 26, 2009
Aptly titled, The Wind Shifts charts the past and future of Latino American Letters by offering a broad range of emerging authors, each one with their own unique and distinctive arcs moving from and against the origin points of Latino Poetry. A great resource for anyone seeking contemporary texts about the US/Latino experience.
January 1, 2014
I'd say I enjoyed 80-90% of the poets featured in this anthology, even if my total lack of Spanish language knowledge made parts confusing. I'm especially interested in reading some more of David Dominguez's work.
August 22, 2007
Excellent selection of up-and-coming Latino/a poets.
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May 15, 2009The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (Camino Del Sol) (2007)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews