Tiempos Lejanos: Poetic Images from the Past (Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series) (English and Spanish Edition) - Hardcover

García, Nasario

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826333001 ISBN 13: 9780826333001

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press, 2004

Synopsis

For Nasario García, poetry comprises his personal images of the past. The poems in this book, presented in Spanish and English, take us back to the village of Ojo del Padre, now called Guadalupe, New Mexico, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when such villages were about to leap from the preindustrial era into a postindustrial world. García grew up in Ojo del Padre and ably captures the landscape, the village and its people, the birds and animals, both domestic and wild, just before they are extinguished forever.

These poems are deceptively simple. While maintaining the viewpoint of a child, García employs sophisticated rhymes and techniques and suffuses the poems with a rich humor. His work links ancient Spanish literary forms with the vernacular language of the village to produce a profoundly authentic New Mexican rural Spanish.

Because these are poems about everyday things, they have a universal appeal. Simple items--a coffee pot, a teakettle--come lyrically to life like a child's wind-up toy.

REMOTE TIMES

Remote times
embedded in the past
remain well guarded
in a precarious
quoin
of my memory
yearning
to escape
so as to enjoy
the freedom
and well being
of my desert
where today
every thing is silent.

TIEMPOS LEJANOS

Tiempos lejanos
quedan reguardados

en un rincón
traicionero de
mi memoria
que se desesperan
por escaparse
para gozar de
la libertad y
del bien estar
de mi desierto
donde hoy día
Todo está muerto.

—from Tiempos Lejanos

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Presented in both Spanish and English, these deceptively simple poems use ancient Spanish literary forms and the vernacular language of today to express the author's personal images of remote times--tiempos lejanos.

About the Author:

Nasario García is professor emeritus of Spanish at New Mexico Highlands University, Las Vegas, New Mexico.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0826333001
• ISBN 13: 9780826333001
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200