Fruta Bomba: Poems
Holly Iglesias
Making Her Mark Press
(self-published)
Asheville, NC
2015
$6.00
Reviewed by Clara B. Jones*
Holly Iglesias, a professor at the
University of North Carolina-Asheville, is an accomplished poet and
translator (Spanish). She has published several chapbooks and books,
and her writing has appeared in Prarie Schooner, Barrow
Street, Crab Orchard Review, Massachusetts Review,
as well as other venues. The poet has been awarded fellowships from a
number of sources, including, the National Endowment for the Arts and
the North Carolina Arts Council, and her first book, Souvenirs of
a Shrunken World, won the First Book Award from Kore Press in
2008. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending a reading by
Iglesias, and it was apparent that I was in the presence of a
socially-conscious poet whose creative work transcends politics,
sociology, and journalism. The lyricism that she achieves is
reminiscent of the “deep song” form associated with Federico
Garcia Lorca, a poet whose verse introduces Fruta Bomba [tr.
papaya or female genitalia].
Fruta Bomba, a revised edition
of a 2012 chapbook published by Q Avenue Press, is a historical as
well as an artistic document. Each contribution is a prose poem, some
exhibiting experimental forms and many in the tradition of Lorca's
surrealism, emphasizing events in Cuba and Miami, as well as physical
and emotional distances between these two locations. Iglesias' poems
of place, time, and space authentically reflect tropical
sensuousness—the colors, the passion and soul (Lorca's duende),
the exoticism, the mystery, and the potential for violence. Fruta
Bomba is not a didactic work; however, it is clearly influenced
by historical figures and highlights, in particular, Cuba's
liberation from Spain and the death of José
Martí; the Spanish Civil
War and the death of Lorca; Janet Reno's advocacy of children's
rights, particularly, the Elián
González case; and, the
Cold War. Though Iglesias has clearly renounced the [optimistic]
Modernism characteristic of Martí
and Lorca, the poems in this chapbook are not depressing or
nihilistic. They reflect, rather, an awareness of the complexities
and contradictions of the post-World War II political landscape—at
personal and social scales.
The poet and editor, Eleanor Wilner,
has praised Iglesias' “pitch-perfect ear and keen eye for the
voices, vantages, and scraps of the actual”, and most of the poems
in the present collection are noteworthy for their metric and
imagistic qualities, notwithstanding their prose form. Iglesias'
formal skills are, also, evident in her placement of poems relative
to one another, and song-like poems stringing words together [“list
poems”] serve almost as “white space”, providing relief from
difficult, sometimes, disturbing, verses. Even the “Glossary” and
“Notes” at the end of the chapbook mimic poems, the former
elucidating contrasting effects of the same word, and “Notes”
reminding us of the historical and legal backgrounds of the poems.
Several poems (e.g., “Talking Without
Italics”; “Llorona”) address change, difference, and the
disruption of calm, and “Bicentenario” echoes an earlier epigram
in which Martí tells us
that he has two fatherlands—Cuba and nighttime. In this poem,
babies are excited to see a garbage truck in the morning, but the
speaker, apparently, a woman, visits a doctor, physically and
mentally ill (“Doctor, my eyes my ears the tremor the buckling
walls Big truck!”). Continuing a recurrent theme, the
welfare of babies and children, the poem, “Anthem”, expresses
concern for children's safety and the preservation of innocence
(“teach my children well feed them on my dreams”). In other
poems, the vulnerability of children contrasts with the vulnerability
of adults bearing the consequences of political unrest and war
(“Assassination can seldom be employed with a clear conscience”)
and the instability of reality when things are not what they appear
to be (“The goat, a bee, six nuns by the sea.”; “The concept of
Miami was correct but got out of hand.”). Other poems represent the
tropics as an ethereal experience (“Another afternoon cloudburst
and what to do but wait.”; “the same easy pleasure his finger
takes when circling the headlight of a Lamborghini as though it were
capable of arousal”). Iglesias' work clearly derives from serious
consideration of and direct experience with her themes, and the poems
resonate with Post-structuralist tones since interpretation is
yielded to the reader.
Fruta Bomba offers
its audience many pleasures and discoveries and is an excellent
example of the high quality of writing to be found in chapbook
format. Iglesias' prose, including, experimental, poems do not appear
to be contrived but seem to be almost classical conventions
appropriate to theme, meaning, and meter. A good example is the poem,
“Oremos”, that begins with a religious litany and moves,
sensitively and logically, to a statement about inequality and
oppression. But, Iglesias cannot be dismissed as a polemical poet.
Her craft is always primary. She is not telling her reader what to
think or do. This chapbook presents the work of a mature poet who
deserves a wider audience and is one of the most compelling
collections that I have read in some time. Fruta Bomba
is a major achievement recommended to all who love literature, and I
look forward to reading Iglesias' future publications.
*Originally
published in Rhizomatic Ideas,
~2015
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