Tag Sarah Cortez

* new collection released!!!

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

I’m happy to announce that my new collection Everything We Think We Hear is officially available on Amazon!

As I’ve mentioned here, this project brings the prose poem and flash fiction structure of my chapbook Reasons (not) to Dance and takes it in a more personal direction, adds a little more guacamole and South Texas to my usual rhetorical and imagistic leanings.

Here are what some of my favorite writers had to say about the project:

“What is the meaning beyond memory’s hauntings? How does one survive the multi-faceted self fashioned from such meanings? Poet José Ángel Araguz’ unflinching collection, Everything We Think We Hear, considers these questions from all angles and gives us answers as adamantine and brilliant as the prose poems he has fashioned in his questing.”

Sarah Cortéz, Councilor, Texas Institute of Letters, Author of Cold Blue Steel

“José Ángel Araguz balances the beauty and agony of a man siphoning love from beer bottles, sparse mother-son conversations, a stern Tía’s throw, and the weathered memories of an absent father. This collection, where a boy who couldn’t dream becomes a man “making communion with all he knows,” insists you gaze on lo raro, the sour-pickled and scattered parts of a soul who refuses to ignore the song of the broken even when surrounded by splendor. “

Peggy Robles-Alvarado, author of Homenaje a las guerreras

“In José Angel Araguz’s collection, Everything We Think We Hear, todo se vale, everything goes! This book plays with our senses and forces us to consider what we think we hear, what we think we are reading. A fierce voice that shouts often and whispers now and then the many truths of life in South Texas. The poetic prose pieces startle the senses with rich images that linger in the mind like memorable dreams. Read these pieces and come away transformed.”

Norma E. Cantú, author of Canícula

Anyone interested in a copy for review, I can make a PDF available. Feel free to contact me: thefridayinfluence@gmail.com

Thank you to Sarah, Peggy, and Norma for their wonderful words of support for this project!

Special thanks as well to Roberto Cabello-Argandoña of Floricanto Press for working with me during this process!

See you Friday!

Jose

* meeting at the Café San Martín

José Angel Araguz 5 Comments

I came across this week’s poem – “Café San Martín” by Agustín Cadena – while reading through the anthology Goodbye Mexico: Poems of Remembrance. I find in the lyric a  subtly profound meditation on the past, or rather the past we live with in our memories which is always juxtaposed against the ever-changing the present.

This being the first week of June, I thought this an apt piece to share. In the poem, it is always June. The speaker’s address is one of emphasis: the name of a cafe no longer there is repeated until everywhere there are cafes. The moment the poem wins me over is when the speaker’s shoes fill with water, as if the rain were a memory seeking him out.

* plaza lo que plaza *

* plaza lo que plaza *

Café San Martín – Agustín Cadena*

Do you remember the Café San Martín?

I do, sometimes,

when it rains in the afternoon and it’s summer.

We liked to go there and drink coffee

and smoke while we looked at the rain.

The Café San Martín was small,

lukewarm, and it had big windows

that looked onto a meridian of June.

But it is no longer there.

Now on that corner where it was

they sell video games.

Have you tried to go back?

Have you walked in the rain, alone,

remembering the girl you were

and asking yourself where would these people have gone,

with their pink curtains and old spoons

and their Café San Martín?

Yes, I have wanted to go back,

many times,

when I happen to think of you,

when my shoes fill with water

and I wish I were that age again

and not so foolish

as to let go of your hand that afternoon.

Once again it is June and raining.

Everywhere there are cafés

in certain neighborhoods.

The present erases all traces.

*translated by C. M. Mayo

*

Happy tracing!

Jose