10/01/2000

Tom Mayo

"Hispanic Heritage Month": It started as "Hispanic Heritage Week" in 1968, and 20 years later Congress expanded the celebration to span Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. For anybody with an interest in the immense outpouring of Hispanic poetry, the extra three weeks are a welcome and much-needed addition to the calendar. Just consider a handful of recently published collections by Hispanic poets who deserve to be read, not only this month, but all year round.

Start with the youngest voice in the crowd, 18-year-old Brigid Milligan from San Antonio, a freshman at Wellesley College. After wading through the diary-inspired vapidities of singer-songwriter Jewel's best-selling collection of poems last year, I silently vowed to steer clear of teenage poets for a while. Ms. Milligan's fine first book of poems, however, amply rewards my short memory and weak resolve.

Home truths

In Mi'ja, Never Lend Your Mop . . . (M&A Editions, $12 paperback), we see the work of a witty and even wise poet whose sure-handed approach to form (use it when it helps, forget it when it doesn't) belies her age. Ms. Milligan mostly sticks to the subjects she knows best – her home, her neighborhood, her family, science (she's also an award-winning science student), poetry – and cannily plumbs the depths of consciousness, experience, heritage and belief. Her self-awareness shines through in a poem such as ''6 a.m. Tortilla Lessons," in which she has yet to achieve "the perfect circles / of my Abuelita's tortillas:" "'dímelo en espańol' / tell me in Spanish / she chides / as I giggle / my tortillas / look like clouds – / additional affirmation / of my Irish half.'' By the end of the poem, her Grandma's tortilla lesson has headed off in a new direction:

it is said that when a woman
can make perfectly round tortillas
she is ready
for the sacrament of matrimony
Abuelita says it's a good thing I'm young
my rough edges may doom me
to be an old maid
with practice
she says
like all things
with practice
and a little espańol
my edges
will smooth

Practice has already paid off for this poet.

Labor intensive

Vatos (Cinco Puntos Press, $19.95) is a collaboration between Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer José Gálvez and poet Luis Alberto Urrea. Vatos, "street slang for dude, guy, pal, brother," is taken from the title of the book's single poem, "Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem." Despite its prediction, the poem celebrates vatos in every line, ending with the affirmation (and promise), "All you vatos, you are not forgotten." Mr. Gálvez's 63 black-and-white photographs brilliantly remind us that there is no single "Hispanic experience," that Hispanic culture is not monolithic. The rich diversity of these images of life in Los Angeles, Tucson and elsewhere combines with Mr. Urrea's deeply rhythmic litany in a way that is by turns haunting and inspiring.

San Antonio's Wings Press specializes in the work of local and regional poets, and a new raft of books has appeared in 2000, including Wendy Barker's estimable Way of Whiteness ($16), which in September won the Austin Writers' League Violet Crown Award for the best book of poetry by a member. Another of this year's offerings is Sheila Sánchez Hatch's latest collection, Strong Box Heart ($14 paperback). The poems in this volume are by turns sensual, ironic, jesting and insistent: bold, honest work, delivered in packets of pure wordcraft. Consider "The Movies Aren't Me," which ends:

I might be brown
but I'm no one's maid
and I'm not Hollywood exotic
– don't drink margaritas
I'm not plotting against anyone
or hoping for someone else's husband
I was never in a gang
so you see
I'm not with MGM or on NBC
ABC, e-t-c.
all the same
– quite glad the movies aren't me

The stereotype-busting is handled deftly here, but the poet's final twist adds something fresh to the familiar charge of media bias. "All the same" works equally as a comment on the networks and studios and as a lead-in to her final point that the media images do not do justice to the life she lives. This is a reality that Brigid Milligan, Mr. Gálvez and Mr. Urrea also convey in their own way, one that adds texture and new meaning to our observance of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Tom Mayo, associate professor of law at Southern Methodist University, teaches "Law, Literature & Medicine" at the law school and at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas.