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Reflections through the Convex Mirror of Time / Reflexiones tras el Espejo Convexo del Tiempo
Poems in Remembrance of the Spanish Civil War / Poemas en Recuerdo de la Guerra Civil Española
By E.A. Mares
Published by UNM Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
In this poignant bilingual collection, preeminent New Mexican poet E. A. “Tony” Mares posthumously shares his passionate journey into the broken heart and glimmering shadows of the Spanish Civil War, whose shock waves still resonate with the political upheavals of our own times. Mares engages in dialogue with heroes and demons, anarchists and cardinals, and beggars and poets. He takes us through the convex mirror of history to the blood-stained streets of Madrid, Guernica, and Barcelona. He interrogates the assassins of Federico García Lorca for their crimes against poetry and humanity. Throughout the collection the narrator is participant and commentator, and his language is both lyrical and direct. In addition to Mares’s parallel Spanish and English poems, the book includes a prologue by Enrique Lamadrid, an introduction by Fernando Martín Pescador, and an epilogue by Susana Rivera. Lovingly shepherded and completed by friends and family, this book will appeal to Mares enthusiasts and readers interested in poetry and history, who will be glad to have this unexpected gift from a master’s voice.
Product Details
- Publisher: UNM Press (August 15, 2022)
- Length: 176 pages
- ISBN13: 9780826364319
Raves and Reviews
It is one thing to read great poetry. It is another thing altogether to read poetry by a great man: prophet, historian, mentor and friend, world traveler; a man born in a time of war who would, in his actions and writings, rage against war, dream against war. Tony Mares in all his fullness is here, in a book that must be read as the world seems again to crack open. We need Tony's voice and vision as never before. This book will be a classic, and blessed are those in whose hands this book falls.--Demetria Martinez, author of The Block Captain's Daughter
In this tableau of poems, E. A. Tony Mares reconstructs the Spanish Civil War as the most iconic struggle of the twentieth century. Naming names, the poet tracks down and confronts the grand and petty players from all sides of that bloody conflict. From the refracted shards of language and the visceral, sensory details of the Spanish landscape, a towering vision emerges, leavened with the humility and humor that finally brings us home, to Tony's home, Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza.--Michael A. Thomas, author of Hat Dance
In this tableau of poems, E. A. Tony Mares reconstructs the Spanish Civil War as the most iconic struggle of the twentieth century. Naming names, the poet tracks down and confronts the grand and petty players from all sides of that bloody conflict. From the refracted shards of language and the visceral, sensory details of the Spanish landscape, a towering vision emerges, leavened with the humility and humor that finally brings us home, to Tony's home, Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza.--Michael A. Thomas, author of Hat Dance
Historical accounts through Mares's poetic visions present the poet, intellectual, and resolanero through a critical public dialogue, in a manner that evokes the conversations he overheard his parents having about the Spanish Civil War in his childhood home near La Plaza Vieja, Albuquerque's Old Town neighborhood. Mares draws the readers/eavesdroppers out of the corners and engages us to create our own musings and reminds us of the important role that poetry plays in keeping historical memory alive. The poems, illuminated by the twin flames of English and Spanish, present the same perspective but from a different angle. Or, as his camarada Tomás Atencio would say, 'Es el mismo guante, nomás que alrevez' (It is the same glove, inside out).--Levi Romero, Inaugural New Mexico State Poet Laureate and author of A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works
