HARRIET ZINNES

2009-07-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

Drawing on the Wall (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2002)
Whither Nonstopping (Marsh Hawk Press, New York, 2005)

The least any poet should do is support his/her/hir publisher -- especially the small press -- as much as possible by buying the press' other books. I also like to know the "company" in which my books find themselves by dint of being published. Marsh Hawk Press, which will publish my THE THORN ROSARY in 2010, is a collective of wise poets including Harriet Zinnes. So I acquired -- and enjoyed -- her books. She has a new Marsh Hawk Book, Light Light or the Curvature of the Earth, which I'll no doubt soon pick up.

LILA ZEMBORAIN

2009-07-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

GUARDIANES DEL SECRETO / GUARDIANS OF THE SECRET, Trans. by Rose Alcala (Noemi Press, Las Cruces, NM, 2009)
Mauve Sea-Orchids, Trans. by Rosa Alcala & Monica de la Torre (Belladonna Books, Brooklyn, 2007)

So happy to have these books by this marvelous poet. I acquired Mauve Sea-Orchids as a result of reviewing it for Galatea Resurrects #9. Subsequently, I received a query from Zemborain's next publisher requesting a blurb. I happily provided the blurb (which is reprinted HERE) and thus was sent a copy of the published book when it was released. I was pleased to be in the company of fellow blurber (and a poet I much admire) Rodrigo Toscano.

Actually, let me reprint moi blurb here as the final version (if you compare the following with what's in the above link, you can learn something about how blurbs are edited to accomplish their marketing job):

Lila Zemborain's power subverts paper: her words turn pages into films of blurred or incomplete images. The references are specific, but what is happening remains stubbornly a question, defying the definitive answer except for what a reader is moved to speculate. What's special about these poems is how they seduce you into wanting to connect with them, in part by opening up to allow the entry of some sort of fever. For it's within such a heightened space where focus begins and the relationship between reader and words can unfold. If lucidity is not possible without the inner gaze (e.g. "an ancestral space"), what Zemborain reminds us is that intimacy is a prerequisite, in the way -- to paraphrase her -- a partly blind person can glean what is being seen by way of touch. There indeed are secrets within this book -- but their discovery requires more than reading. The reader must allow the secrets to "enter[...] another way" than "through the eyes." If you are lucky, you will read these poems and discover something about how you were made, as well as possibilities of what you may become. These poems' secrets are within you.

How I Got Moi Poetry Books

HARRIET ZINNES

LILA ZEMBORAIN