I don’t remember the title. But… Poet: Dolores Dorantes
A friend of mine that works at a bookstore reposted this meme. I laughed, thinking this must happen a lot… I went to my bookshelf to see how many red covered books I have (there are quite a few). Then one caught my attention: Dolores Dorantes’ “sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and SEPTIEMBRE”. Embarrassingly, I don’t remember the title, the cover, or even having the book.
I opened the first page of this bilingual edition and… whoa. Bilingual books seem to have the same format: the poet’s native tongue on the left side, the translation on the right side. But this book, the Spanish is on the top of the page, followed by white space, and then the English at the bottom. It’s a visually appealing form. It makes the work seem airy and light.
And the poems? Brilliant. I just started reading it and haven’t been able to put it down. She uses parentheticals and indentation to make great asides like this on page 9:
“FROM THE OTHER SIDE
(in the part of you
that doesn’t show) I construct
what I think”
She uses very little punctuation, uses italics and caps lock, and lots of white space. It is a master class in using form to help the poetry convey meaning and emotion.
Imagery is always something I really push hard on with my students; without imagery, there is no poem. It is where emotions and empathy are evoked, where the poet takes us on a journey with them. My imagination can easily go where a writer or poet leads me and Dorantes really pulls me in with lines like these on page 39:
OTHER TIMES I HAVE PLUNGED MYSELF INTO THIS EARTH
and once again everything
into this humid gave and once gain everything begins
from emptiness we are pressed
and distant another body germinates
This is beautiful. She is a master at the craft.
My last couple of blogs I have talked about a specific poem and then more about the book or the author. But with this book, I want to just give a first impression as I just started it.
During my Master’s program, I did one project period where I read a bunch of work from various female writers. It was a period where I wanted to see how they wrote about love, loss, emotions… I know I ordered this book because Dorantes is Mexican. Much of my reading has been translated Latin American works of both poetry and fiction, so it fit my interest. But why I never read it, who knows?
I’m just glad I pulled it off the shelf that day.
A quick look for her online shows that she is a journalist, poet, and writer and that she is a Buddhist priest. Dorantes lives in exile in the United States after receiving death threats for working with incarnated and marginalized women on promoting their own autobiographic work.
Her blog is: http://doloresdorantes.blogspot.com/
Needless to say, my interest is more than piqued. I hope you check out her life and work, and I’m going back to reading her work and finding out more about her.