September's Featured PoetLorna Dee Cervantes (1954-) was born in San Francisco, California, the year the word ‘Chicano’ first gained currency to designate Americans of Mexican descent. Educated at San José City College and San José State University, she published in 1981
Emplumada, her first collection of poems, which won the 1982 American Book Award. In them she has given voice to the Chicana (American women of Mexican heritage). ‘Emplumada’ in Spanish means feathered, in plumage (after molting). It also means ‘pen’. Here is the book’s well-chosen title poem:
Emplumada
When summer ended
the leaves of snapdragons withered
taking their shrill‑colored mouths with them.
They were still, so quiet. They were
violet where umber now is. She hated
and she hated to see
them go. Flowers
born when the weather was good — this
she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches
daring their ways above the fence, and further,
two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other,
arcing their bodies in grim determination
to find what is good, what is
given them to find. These are warriors
distancing themselves from history.
They find peace
in the way they contain the wind
and are gone.
Further Reading: Emplumada, poems by Lorna Dee Cervantes, 1981;
From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger, 1991 by Lorna Dee Cervantes. Also visit the poet's
blog.
Coming in October: Kay Ryan, new U.S. Poet Laureate, 2008-2009
The 'Five Ancestors' Series
