The Lime Orchard Woman: Poems

Book by Ríos, Alberto

Here the cerebral and the earthy are vividly combined, and the resulting tension between reality and fantasy yields fresh and often powerful imagery. Deeply rooted in the physical, these poems posit sensuous experiencea strain of music, a kiss, the maturation of a woman's bodyas the soil from which abstractions about human nature and existence might grow. Thus, a man's ritual of shaving becomes a symbolic act of withdrawal: "Every day he was leaving her, / But just a little at a time. / Each day he shaved off something of himself. / One day he would be altogether different." Rather than drawing direct explanations, Rios ( Five Indiscretions ) illustrates through startling juxtapositions. As the poems are neither linear nor logical, this technique is at once frustrating and provocative. If one wishes for more intellectual depth, the raw power of the imagery lends the verses an almost surrealistic quality, enhanced by the richness of language and the originality of vision.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Rios is one of the more widely represented poets on the small press scene today. Like Gary Soto or Ray Gonzalez, his roots are Mexican-American, and at his best the poems reflect that tradition. Working with the quasi-mythical topics of his ethnic background, as he does in "The Sword Eusebio Montero Swallowed," Rios demonstrates a capacity for powerfully extending a metaphor. But for the most part these poems fall into the slender-line, work shop-oriented poetry that insists on an anecdotal, narrative, and representational axis, with results that can be embarassing: "I can only pretend/ I am a woman." One regrets the absence of an informed sense of poetic tradition, not just in Rios, but in so many poets writing today.
- Ivan Arguelles, Univ. of California at Berkeley Lib.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.