Originally posted May 19, 2007
Reprinted from the El Paso Times
Poet explores power of words in coping with disaster
By Rigoberto González
Juan J. Morales is an American poet with an unusual ethnic ancestry (his mother is Ecuadoran; his father, Puerto Rican), and his work is cultivated out of a desire to record and remember the ways in which oral history, lore, superstition and mythology trickle down and intertwine through generations as a means of cultural survival.
This noble mission is driven to fruition with the release of “Friday and the Year That Followed” (Fairweather Books, $13.95 paperback), winner of the Rhea and Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition. It’s a debut that takes Latino poetry back to the homeland, where the collision of the Old World and the New continue to stimulate the imagination.
The opening section, “Ambato,” and the book’s title refer to the 1949 earthquake that terrified people living at the base of the Andes. Poems read like testimonies and hearsay, neither to be doubted despite the incredible claims of prophecy (”Mamá dreamed the earthquake / the night before it happened”) and tragedy (like the man earth swallowed up to the neck, “the head stranded / in the constant rows of corn”).
The year that followed that fateful August Friday is a year of reckoning, of healing through stories of luck and miracles in order to recover faith after loss. For the rest of the world, the natural disaster is but a six-line newspaper story “somewhere in the back pages.” The responsibility of memory falls on the townfolk and on their progeny.
That same sensibility is expressed in the second section, which dramatizes the life of a Puerto Rican soldier wounded in the Korean War and his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder. The discharged soldier’s peripatetic existence is fraught with painful flashbacks because he empathizes with both sides of the international conflict, from the sleepwalking American soldier who sleeps bound with a rope, to the prisoners at the Koje Do Reeducation Camp who “shiver like shreds of laundry hanging on sharpened wire.”
These poems affirm that the casualties of war are not only soldiers, but also the soldiers’ familial and romantic relationships. And as the poet commits the experience to language, so too does he lift, if only in gesture, the Puerto Rican soldier’s burdens.
The final section of the book, aptly titled “Wandering between Villages,” centers on the tall tales of the Southwest, the poet’s new geography and legacy. The picaresque figure Patapalo and the Aztec god Mictlantecuhtli have now been bridged to Viracocha, the Incan god of creation, and to the pre-Columbian Nazca lines of South America that “sleep like bones and potshards / under the stars and sun.”
Morales’ project, which streams across eras, continents and peoples, is actually about a Friday and the centuries that precede and follow. This ambitious book of poems taps into the psyche of legend and the necessity of storytelling, and succeeds in commemorating family history.
As a first book, “Friday and the Year That Followed” holds much promise for future accomplishment.
Rigoberto González is an award-winning writer living in New York City. His Web site is www.rigobertogonzalez.com, and he may be reached at Rigoberto70@aol.com.
Originally posted April 11, 2007
Trees appear in myths and legends around the world, often suggesting a point of connection between mere mortals and the divine. In the Western tradition, we are familiar with wood nymphs, primarily the story of Daphne and Apollo, however, an African tale tells a similar story about a woman turned into a tree. In Celtic myths, you’ll find the Holly King. In Buddhism, Buddha became enlightened under a Bhodi tree. India has many myths surrounding trees, originating in a deep veneration for trees and sacred forests. One of the five trees in Indra’s paradise grants abundance. The iconic image of a serpent guarding a tree appears in Sumerian art. Cherry blossoms in Japanese folktales are a significant reminder of the transient quality of life. The ash tree in Norse sagas draws knowledge from a magic spring. I found a Web site listing folktales and myths concerning trees from all over the globe: Africa, China, Europe and more. Just go to: http://www.spiritoftrees.org/folktales/featured_tales.html
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted April 5, 2007
According to Joseph Campbell, there are three phases to the hero’s journey in all great mythological stories: Separation, Initiation and Return. Looking at the novel I’ve recently started, I can see that the three phases are in place – I did this subconsciously. My character receives a call (literally), goes on the road where she goes through several rites of passage, and then returns home a stronger woman. What if my character didn’t come home or never left home in the first place – would I have a story? I’ve read that there has to be trouble for a story to happen. I suppose my character could get the call and let the machine pick it up – just stay home wondering what would have happened had she gone on the journey; watch American Idol and eat Sara Lee cheesecake. Not much of a story, I admit.
Years ago, I was working on a story about a rabid dog (I know, I know). I was trying to figure out which of my characters should shoot the dog, when I was introduced to “The Writer’s Journey,” by Christopher Vogler, based on Campbell’s philosophy. From Vogler’s list of archetypes, I could spot my hero, mentor, trickster, etc. According to Vogler, it was the hero who should face death as initiation – how could I have missed it? When I sent the story to an editor, she said it was cliché (imagine!). I’ve realized since then, that my hero did not have to “shoot the dog” to go through an initiation. Often an inner conflict is a more dramatically satisfying rite of passage than a spectacular one.
– Leslie Fox
Originally posted February 4, 2007
Here’s a good book of poems to check out:
“Friday and the Year that Followed” by Juan Morales
It’s not strictly mythical, but does have some mythic elements. My favorites are the poems tracing Juan’s family stories – like his mother’s family’s experience of living through the 1949 earthquake in Ecuador and his father’s war stories.
Get more info and order from Bedbug Press.
Read an interview with Juan Morales in Mirage Magazine
– Sari
Editor
Sari Krosinsky lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her partner and two cats.
She received a B.A. in religious studies and a M.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico. Her poems have appeared in Poesia, Pebble Lake Review, The American Poetry Journal, Arsenic Lobster, Verse Daily, and others. Fiction Editor
Leslie Fox lived in Central America during her formative years and in New Mexico since the mid-70s – before it was cool.
She writes novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and creative nonfiction. Some of her short fiction has appeared in The Medical Muse, red. a journal of arts, Earth’s Daughters and Earthships: A New Mecca Poetry Collection. She has a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.Art Editor
Dianne Schlies is a practicing artist and has taught studio art since 1986. She received her M.F.A. from SMU at Dallas, Texas in 1990. She has studied or worked with David Bates, Mel Bochner, Squeak Carnwath, Harmony Hammond, Ed Harris, Joyce Kozloff, Mary Ellen Mark, Duane Michals and Robert Rauschenberg. Schlies presently teaches Drawing and 2-D Design in Albuquerque, New Mexico.