Stepmotherland

by Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America.

Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes's first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panam� to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes's work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of discovery, from the discovery of America to the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same.

Holnes's poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist's evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Nonfiction

104 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2022

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

An autobiographical odyssey from Panama to Texas, Holnes’s debut collection (winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize) ponders split identities through art, current events, and religion. Of African and Chocó descent, the poet describes himself as “Black but not black enough”: a mixed-race background and queerness complicate his access to the American dream. The poems take a multitude of forms, and the erotic and devotional mix in provocative ways. Timely and multifarious, with incisive crosscultural commentary.

See my full review at Foreword.

[2TReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think I would read another resonant poetry collection so soon after #Habitus. But here we are.

Holnes blew me away with these poems. With depth and lyrical verve, we move from Panama to America, through dictatorship to invasion and around mother, father, grandmother, friends, lovers and the ways in which he was shaped by their presence.

I could not help but become immersed in these words and their flow that spoke of change, family, love, identity, and place not only within our communities, but our lands of birth and step-lands.

The title speaks volumes of Holnes' experience from his foundational home to a brand new land where his mother had so many dreams of and for. There is celebration of women and sexuality and loss that will truly strike at the core of the reader. It certainly did for me. Definitely a collection that calls for numerous readings.

[Caroline Ashworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection. It was both easy to comprehend and thought-provoking.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grabbed a handful of poetry collections off of the “new” shelf at the large college town library. I had no knowledge of Darrel Alejandro Holnes going into this collection.

Holnes is Panamanian-American, black, and part of the LGBTQ community. Like most contemporary poetry, these intersections of identity make up most of the content of his poems. Other topics include family, art, love, and food.

The style is free flowing, like most contemporary poetry, but Holnes does utilize some structural play (quite a bit of couplets). This was the first time I had seen a poem written as single worlds that function as links in a chain (literally one line stretching across several pages).

I was very interested in the poems surrounding war in Panama but less interested in the poems about identity.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This seems to be my year for reading contemporary poetry. Stepmotherland is this month's book for the World Literature group I am in on Goodreads (the reading for Panama.) The book begins with poems about the author's childhood and adolescence in Panama and the American invasion to oust General Noriega, then deals with his experiences as an immigrant and Hispanic-Black man in the United States. There are many love/erotic poems, some straight and some gay; many pop-culture references (rap stars, Beyoncé, Rihanna and so on) and poems based on works of art. Nearly all the poems were good, although there were a few -- one with sado-masochistic imagery -- that I couldn't relate to.

[Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a lot of time spent staring at my screen trying to figure out what to write. I don't know how to express all I felt and experienced within these short pages because, as with true poetry, there was so much subtlety within the multiple word meanings and them rhythm that moved line after line. Darrel Alejandro Holnes spoke to me, awed me, intimated me and arose a passion for thought and action. This should absolutely be in any poetry lovers collection and in the collections of those who adore veracious wordsmiths.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A stunning debut collection featuring an eloquent poetic voice that explores a wide range of issues from LGBTQ identity to multiculturalism, proving once again that “the personal is political” (hat tip to Adrienne Rich).

Favorite Poems:
“When My Mother Gives Up Her American Dream to Marry My Father”
“When Narcos Kidnap JuanFe”
“The Art of Diplomacy”
“Bread Pudding Grandmamma”
“Conception”
“bar•by”
“Pieta by Michelangelo: Marble, 1499”
“Ode to My Father, The Captain”
“Angelitos Negros”
“The Down-Low Messiahs”
“Joseph on Knowledge in the Biblical Sense”
“Black Parade”

[Phobean]

I think maybe not for me? I don’t have enough Spanish, or knowledge of Panama. I also spent a lot of time confused by the poet’s (or, if not the poet then the narrators of specific poems) sexuality. I think maybe they are bi or pan? The beginning poems did not prep me for the concluding. There was a lot of quick-change and cycling through ideas that made it feel hard for me to hang on to the concepts presented.

[Jimi Evans Remick · Rating 4 out of 5]

the poems experiments with forms and language. we get a blending and blurring of borders both literary, physically and culturally. a celebration of women, living, sexuality, dreams, belonging (and wanting to.) a collection that needs to be sat with, immersed in and returned to. Closer to 5 stars probably than 4.

favs:
arroz con pollo
bread pudding grandmamma
pietà by michelangelo: marble, 1499

[Patricia Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful collection with multiple timely themes.

Some of my favorite moments:

The sun mirrors the
fish-like flesh of the sea.

I avoid
seeing ghosts by rolling my eyes
to the back of my head.

[Rolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lovely collection exploring race, sexuality, and immigrant identity. "Poder," "Tú" and "Black Parade" were all standouts for me, especially this line from "Tú":

"But I don't want to be whiter, just free" (p. 21)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Come on, lets swallow the sun
and burn bright into the night
until out bellies are filled with
so much hubris
no man can ever put our kinship or kind asunder.
Filled with so much hubris,
we put god herself to shame."

The poems based on art were fucking magnificent!!

[Trevann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this body of work. The imagery used was effective and captivating. I loved how the themes were handled. I would recommend this book to poetry lovers and anyone else really.

[Toni Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the kind of poetry I enjoy - it tells a story and captures reflection and emotion

[Reagan Kapasi · Rating 2 out of 5]

For when you want to travel from Panama to America and read about a personal transformation