Xicancuicatl: Collected Poems

CAMINO IMAGINADO

Blue leaves, hojas rotas in the shape of stars. Ni un no en tu vocabulario but for others; blue in place of green in the shape of Spain. Ojos the color of dirt, chocolate, coffee, time, azules las horas, hojas de horas van y se van, ni una palabra, ni una queja, nor broken bit a tu lado beside me andamos walking, si walking caminamos caminos like these, such streets, what city.

7/15/95 Paris

Xicancuicatl collects the poetry of leading avant-garde Chicanx poet Alfred Arteaga (1950-2008), whom French philosopher Gilles Deleuze regarded as among those rare poets who are able to raise or shape a new language within their language. In his five published collections, Arteaga made crucial breakthroughs in the language of poetry, basing his linguistic experiments on the multilingual Xicanx culture of the US Southwest. His formal resources and finely tuned ear for sound patterns and language play remain astonishing. His poetical work, presented as a whole here for the first time, speaks more than ever to a moment in which border-crossing, cultural diversity, language-mixing and a multi-cultural vision of America are critical issues.