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REVIEW
December 2015 Valerina Quintana Recalling Home by C.J. Shane |
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VQuintana_Recalling Home_
What could be better than sitting on the back porch on a warm, sunny, late November afternoon in the Sonoran Desert and reading a book of wonderful poetry? Life doesn’t get much better than that, especially if that book of poetry is Valerina Quintana’s Recalling Home: A Poetry of Remembrance.
Quintana is a long-time Tucson resident, more than 40 years now in the Old Pueblo. But her roots are in southern Colorado in that region where the long, continuous north-south ranges of the Rockies merge into the high-elevation, always windy great North American prairie. Her poems are about her childhood in southeastern Colorado among extended family members and neighbors. The poems are rich with colorful details about small-town life in a relatively unpopulated part of the American West.
Quintana is part of a small and not-so-well known group of Americans that traditionally were known as Hispanos. These were the descendants of Spanish colonizers in the New World in the late 16th and early 17th centuries who received land grants directly from the king of Spain. These early colonists established farms and ranches along the Rio Grande Valley moving from south through northern New Mexico and up into Colorado. They even speak a form of archaic Spanish that has been documented by linguists.
Consequently Quintana’s poems are not only about her own childhood memories growing up in a semi-rural area in this very special place, but also her memories of the stories her mother and grandmother told her. Through these memories and stories, we get insight into a world and a time and a people not well known to most Americans, even those familiar with the better known borderlands Mexican-American culture.
The book opens with “Young Love,” a tale in a poem about two young lovers determined to thwart a father’s protectiveness toward his daughter. In the poem “Watermelon Season,” we meet an eccentric uncle who frequently shows up unannounced, always calling out a Navajo greeting, “Yá’át’ééh,” then proceeds to devour watermelon while talking about “all the horses he owned and rode when he was young.”
Quintana shares her childhood adventures, including a near-disaster in “Playing with Fire” based on her fascination with matches. She starts a fire in the family home despite a clear warning from her mother. The poem recounts her desperate attempt to hide from the punishment she knew was coming – coming just as soon as her mother put out the fire. “I breathe. I wait. Potsful of water, a wet, black corner of bedspread, a mother who knows exactly where to find me.”
Quintana is a long-time Tucson resident, more than 40 years now in the Old Pueblo. But her roots are in southern Colorado in that region where the long, continuous north-south ranges of the Rockies merge into the high-elevation, always windy great North American prairie. Her poems are about her childhood in southeastern Colorado among extended family members and neighbors. The poems are rich with colorful details about small-town life in a relatively unpopulated part of the American West.
Quintana is part of a small and not-so-well known group of Americans that traditionally were known as Hispanos. These were the descendants of Spanish colonizers in the New World in the late 16th and early 17th centuries who received land grants directly from the king of Spain. These early colonists established farms and ranches along the Rio Grande Valley moving from south through northern New Mexico and up into Colorado. They even speak a form of archaic Spanish that has been documented by linguists.
Consequently Quintana’s poems are not only about her own childhood memories growing up in a semi-rural area in this very special place, but also her memories of the stories her mother and grandmother told her. Through these memories and stories, we get insight into a world and a time and a people not well known to most Americans, even those familiar with the better known borderlands Mexican-American culture.
The book opens with “Young Love,” a tale in a poem about two young lovers determined to thwart a father’s protectiveness toward his daughter. In the poem “Watermelon Season,” we meet an eccentric uncle who frequently shows up unannounced, always calling out a Navajo greeting, “Yá’át’ééh,” then proceeds to devour watermelon while talking about “all the horses he owned and rode when he was young.”
Quintana shares her childhood adventures, including a near-disaster in “Playing with Fire” based on her fascination with matches. She starts a fire in the family home despite a clear warning from her mother. The poem recounts her desperate attempt to hide from the punishment she knew was coming – coming just as soon as her mother put out the fire. “I breathe. I wait. Potsful of water, a wet, black corner of bedspread, a mother who knows exactly where to find me.”
Valerina Quintana
Her poetry has an elegant simplicity about it. She manages again and again in a just a few very well-chosen words to convey some deep and complex ideas. Think about the multi-generational family tragedy revealed in the poem “Remember” with these simple words, “Remember your great grandfather Bartolo and his two-thousand acre ranch. It sold for ten cents an acre during the Depression.”
Quintana has a gift for subtle humor. One of my favorites is the poem, “Find the Dead, Eavesdropping on the Living: Overheard in a Small Town Cemetery.” How about these lines? “I know you’re all buried here/but I came only to see Mom.” Who among us doesn’t have at least one relative who will happily snub us even after death? I had to laugh at that.
There is a kind of sad yearning revealed in these poems for an earlier time in which a child is surrounded by familial love. The scents and sounds and sights of that childhood permeate her poems. Roasted potatoes, chopping wood, scaring each other with tales of La Llorona, green chiles, wind, ashes. The sad yearning is for a return to a place with so many memories for one who has been gone for a long, long time. And yet, always present is the awareness that she, and we, can’t go back.
In the final section of the book, “An Assortment,” Quintana brings us to the present day and to Tucson, with poems from Tumamoc Hill, her home, and her life here. Several of her poems, among them “Collage,” tell us that she has created new memories and can also recall those memories from her home in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona.
One of the special delights of this book is that it comes with a CD of the poet reading the poems from the book. If you are a person who believes that poetry should be heard, not just read, then you will appreciate this option.
You can find Quintana’s book Recalling Home: A Poetry of Remembrance,” on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Recalling-Poetry-Remembrance-Valerina-Quintana/dp/0692365605/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448041059&sr=1-1&keywords=Valerina+Quintana
If you’d like to know more about Valerina Quintana, read our 2014 interview with her here: http://archives2013-2014sonoranartsnetwork.weebly.com/valerina-quintana.html
Quintana has a gift for subtle humor. One of my favorites is the poem, “Find the Dead, Eavesdropping on the Living: Overheard in a Small Town Cemetery.” How about these lines? “I know you’re all buried here/but I came only to see Mom.” Who among us doesn’t have at least one relative who will happily snub us even after death? I had to laugh at that.
There is a kind of sad yearning revealed in these poems for an earlier time in which a child is surrounded by familial love. The scents and sounds and sights of that childhood permeate her poems. Roasted potatoes, chopping wood, scaring each other with tales of La Llorona, green chiles, wind, ashes. The sad yearning is for a return to a place with so many memories for one who has been gone for a long, long time. And yet, always present is the awareness that she, and we, can’t go back.
In the final section of the book, “An Assortment,” Quintana brings us to the present day and to Tucson, with poems from Tumamoc Hill, her home, and her life here. Several of her poems, among them “Collage,” tell us that she has created new memories and can also recall those memories from her home in the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona.
One of the special delights of this book is that it comes with a CD of the poet reading the poems from the book. If you are a person who believes that poetry should be heard, not just read, then you will appreciate this option.
You can find Quintana’s book Recalling Home: A Poetry of Remembrance,” on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Recalling-Poetry-Remembrance-Valerina-Quintana/dp/0692365605/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1448041059&sr=1-1&keywords=Valerina+Quintana
If you’d like to know more about Valerina Quintana, read our 2014 interview with her here: http://archives2013-2014sonoranartsnetwork.weebly.com/valerina-quintana.html
