Description:
Poetry in Dangerous Times brings together new & selected poems from two of America's most fearless literary voices. The timely and intimate dialogue between Demetria Martínez and Susan Sherman spans both decades and movements.
Brief description: Demetria Martínez, writer, poet, activist, and journalist, covered religion for the Albuquerque Journal and was a national news editor and a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. Her widely translated novel Mother Tongue, set during the Sanctuary Movement, won a Western States Book Award. The novel was inspired by her 1987 indictment on charges of conspiracy in connection with allegedly transporting Central American refugees into the United States. The U.S. government attempted to use her poem "Nativity: For Two Salvadoran Women, 1986-1987" against her. A jury acquitted her on First Amendment grounds. Martínez is the author of numerous poetry collections and the short story collection The Block Captain's Daughter (which received the 2013 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation). Her essay collection, Confessions of a Berlitz-Tape Chicana, won an International Latino Book Award. She has also received the Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano/Latino Literature.
Review Quotes:
"Here are two poets who have faced dangerous times before, always with courage, patience, compassion, and eloquence. In the face of danger, they not only speak, but sing. The proof is in the pages of this unique and necessary collection, two women from two different worlds showing us our common ground, the path we must walk, illuminated by the fire in these poems, to find our common humanity, to find the way home."
-Martín Espada, author of the National Book Award-winning Floaters and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Republic of Poetry
"Socially engaged at all times, their work maintains a sharp yet subtle adherence to subjects that matter. The poems share an attractive economy of language, and both poets possess a delicate elusiveness that allows their socially concerned work to engagingly address realities in these dehumanizing times."
-Daisy Zamora, author of The Violent Foam: New & Selected Poems
"Perhaps this is just what we need now, now in these 'Dangerous Times': to hold onto a certain sanity found in truth-telling, if for no other reason than to inspire more truth-of histories forgotten, old-school knowledges reawakened, of movements that matter(ed), of loving that deepens wordlessly with aging."
-Cherríe Moraga, author of Native Country of the Heart
"When strong/queer/activist poets craft a gift this magnificent, take it."
-Mary Oishi, Albuquerque Poet Laureate Emerita and author of Sidewalk Cruiseship
"[T]hese poems address a wide range of themes and passions, always deeply moving as they remind us to struggle for social justice but also to rest and remember the people and things we love and struggle for; they are enriching and engaging."
-Irena Klepfisz, author of Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems 1971-2021