On the other side of night, Francisco Alarcon is waiting. One of Chicano literature’s premier poets, Alarcon has brought his luminous images to the page in such acclaimed volumes as Sonnets to Madness and Other Misfortunes and Snake Poems. Now he has assembled the best of his work from fifteen years, along with fourteen new poems, in a book that distills his magical sense of reality into a cup brimming with passion. Raised in Guadalajara and now living in the San Francisco Bay area, Alarcon sees that
‘Mexican’ / is not / a noun / or an / adjective / ‘Mexican’ / is a life / long / low-paying / job. Participating in a poetic tradition that goes back to the mystic Spanish poets of the sixteenth century, he brings us sonnets infused with romance and tenderness and shorter poems that are direct and hard-hitting commentaries on American society, as he cries out for a more godlike god, one who spends nights / in houses / of ill repute / and gets up late / on Saturdays. Alarcon invokes both the mysteries of Mesoamerica and the otherness of his gay identity.
My skin is dark / as the night / in this country / of noontime, he writes, but my soul / is even darker / from all the light / I carry inside. In lyrical poems open to wide interpretation, he transcends ethnic concerns to address social, sexual, and historical issues of concern to all Americans. The fourteen new poems in From the Other Side of Night offer startling new commentaries on life and love, sex and AIDS. Shifting effortlessly between English and Spanish and even Nahuatl Alarcon demonstrates the gift of language that has earned him both a wide readership and the admiration of fellow poets. With this book, he invites new readers to meet him where the darkness is palpable and the soul burns bright.