Luis Valadez is a performance poet and his poems shout to be read aloud. It’s then that their language dazzles most brightly. It’s then that the emotions bottled up on the page explode beyond words. And there is plenty of emotion in these poems. Frankly autobiographical, they recount the experiences of a Mexican American boy growing up in a tough town near Chicago. Just as in life, the feelings in these poems are often jumbled, sometimes spilling out in a tumble, sometimes coolly recollected. Sometimes the words jump and twitch as if they’d been threatened or attacked. Sometimes they just sit there knowingly on the page, weighted down by the stark reality of it all.
José García
put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear
This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. It owes as much to hip hop as it does to the canon. But Valadez has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It’s just that he does it his way.
i anagram and look and subject to deformation and reconfiguring . . .
it ain’t events or blocks that ahm jettisoning through this process
it be layers of meaning, identity, narrative, and ego that gets peeled off
i can only increase my own understanding
José García
put a thirty-five to me
my mother was in the other room
He would have done us both
if not for the lust of my fear
This new Mexican American/Chicano voice is all at once arresting, bracing, shocking, and refreshing. This is not the poetry you learned in school. It owes as much to hip hop as it does to the canon. But Valadez has paid his academic dues, and he certainly knows how to craft a poem. It’s just that he does it his way.
i anagram and look and subject to deformation and reconfiguring . . .
it ain’t events or blocks that ahm jettisoning through this process
it be layers of meaning, identity, narrative, and ego that gets peeled off
i can only increase my own understanding
Valadez's lyrics come storming off the page, capturing the reader in a whirlwind.'—MultiCultural Review
'Inventive, energetic, and surprising.'—El Paso Times
Valadez's lyrics come storming off the page, capturing the reader in a whirlwind.'—MultiCultural Review
'Inventive, energetic, and surprising.'—El Paso Times
In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.’—Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century
In voices colloquial and church, reverent and riotous, serious and sly; in rap and fragment, sound and sin; from gangs and minimum-wage jobs to astrology and Christ, Luis Valadez makes his fearless debut. This poetry is a painfully honest disclosure of identity and anger, and it is as mindful of falsity and as hard on itself as it is playful, loose, and loving. Sometimes the language is clear and cutting, while other times it disintegrates into sonic units and primal utterances: Luis calls upon the whole history of oral and verbal expression to tell his story—going so far as to write his own (wildly funny and disturbing) obituary.’—Arielle Greenberg, author of My Kafka Century
On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against 'impossibility' and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.’—Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead
On the trail blazed by innovators like Harryette Mullen and John Yau, Luis Valadez sends wild, canny, charged, and vulnerable prayers from the hard camp of contested identities. Each line, each word, is a blow against 'impossibility' and the heavy pressure to be silent as expected. Interrogations of tradition(s) as well as celebrations, the irresistible poems in Valadez’s first collection exist at the exact fresh moment of deciding to live and to love.’—Laura Mullen, author of After I Was Dead
Valadez's work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! ‘—Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax and The Natural Takeover of Small Things, also published by the University of Arizona Press.
Valadez's work is not simply fierce language poetics… here is a writer—the genuine article—whose style is that of a truth-speaking curandero, offering sacred cantos to anyone interested in illuminating that inner revolution called corazón. To read his work is to discover the future of American poética! ‘—Tim Z. Hernandez, author of Skin Tax and The Natural Takeover of Small Things, also published by the University of Arizona Press.
Luis H. Valadez received his B.A. from Columbia College Chicago and his M.F.A. from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He is the winner of the Lily Endowment and a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Scholar. His work has appeared in esteemed journals such as Columbia Poetry Review, Bombay Gin, and Wet: A Journal of Proper Bathing.
Getten Rid of Histree
chiquito
Taurus in the Sixth Cusp
Raymond
Kil-lahhh!
Section 5
Mars Sesquiquadrate Jupiter
Talkin’ Shit to Dharma
Walking Home from the Bus
From Behind the PACE Bus Station
no cops/no parents/no memory
versus
Capricorn on the Second Cusp
Neptune in the First House
Jesus Sestina
eatin’ wit’ Christ
eatin’ wit’ Christ
wit’ Christ
Christ as Bastard
Section 18
Section 13
potato peeling
frontin’
Section 7
Mercury in the Second House
Gemini in the Seventh Cusp
radio
esau past love
you goddamn bastard
want to touch my sister
the won category
Dharma Talkin’ Shit
Moon Semisquare Uranus
Moon Conjunction Moon
Saturn in the Ninth House
Taurus in the Sixth Cusp
Moon Square Venus
Sun Semisquared Uranus
Stabbed in the Neck
Yo Dharma
if there’s a me to fuk wit’
Acknowledgments
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