First Light: : An Anthology of Paraguayan Women Writers
Edited by Susan Smith Nash

This is the first anthology of Paraguayan women writers published anywhere, including Paraguay. Includes work by 25 poets. For many Anglo-Americans, Paraguay seems remote and perhaps irrelevant. Yet it is a country that has produced important writers, and continues to do so. Two distinct aspects of the country may suggest why its literature is so vibrant, cogent, and important: Much of the nation's literature is written in Guaraní, a native American language which was old when the Spanish conquistadors arrived nearly 500 years ago. Although other AmerIndian languages still continue to be spoken throughout Latin America, this may be the last one to still be part of a mainstream literary culture. Paraguay has a long history of getting embroiled in wars with its neighbors. Through these, it continues to loose large numbers of its male population. This means, on one hand, that women have a lower status in some parts of society; but it also means that they run a good deal of it, even if their labors don't receive the recognition they deserve. Women are the society's writers. Thus, the country is in the unique position of having a female dominated literature, much of it conducted in a Native American language. Some of its poets translate their own work into Spanish, serving as global models for a means to retain an indigenous language and identity while also recreating their work in a mega-language that keeps them from self-ghettoization. This collection is presented in English

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Ayvu Membyre / Hijo de aquel verbo / Offspring of a Distant Word
by Susy Delgado

This complete book by one of Paraguay's leading poets includes her Guaraní poems, her own Spanish translations, and Susan Smith Nash's translations into English. A book to read along with the First Light anthology. The incantations and "deep song" of this meditation might have delighted Lorca, and should move anyone concerned with the roots of existence.

 

 
Consideración de la rosa
By Alicia Torres
English translation by Paddy Bushe

Poised, neoclassical lyrics, which find their closest equivalent in English in the poems of H.D. These elegantly measured poems explore archetypes and mythologies as they come in contact with daily life in Venezuela.

 

 
Avelino de Araujo: A Survey

Much of the attention paid to Latin American visual poets has focused on the Brasilian Noigandres group. Araujo, a Brazilian visual poet, has gone his own way, creating icons, ideograms, carpet pages, tapestries, and other forms out of the words and images of daily life, old and emergent cultures, and commercial exploitation. Quick wit, keen observation, and mellow wisdom make this poet an essential of 20th Century experimental literature. As a bit of value-added for us at Light and Dust and Kaldron, Araujo used our introdcution to his web survey as the introduction to a subsequent book.

 

 
Clichetes
by Philadelpho Menezes

Just one poem, but the center of Menezes's literary opus and a seminal work of Latin American visual poetry, whose repercussions echo throughout his native Brazil and the rest of Latin America five years after his untimely death.

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Introduction and Conclusion to Poetics and Visuality
by Philadelpho Menezes
Translated by Harry Polkinhorn

The framework of Menezes's major historical and aesthetic study of 20th Century poetry. This work stands as a companion and in some ways as a counterweight to Clemente padin's Art and People - the two works together setting the parameters of late 20th Century Latin American avant-gard literature. Menezes's analysis is ecclectic and anti-sectarian, most strongly oriented toward new possibilities. Kept out of print in Menezes's native Brazil, this work was first published simultaneously at this web site and on paper by San Diego State University press.

 

 
Art and People: Latin American Art In Our Time
by Clemente Padin
Translated by Harry Polkinhorn

One of the most important historical and theoretical books of the late 20th Century. Includes galleries of visual poetry and related forms which make up an internal anthology. Analysis in multiple dimensions using multiple methodologies. Social commitment integrate with aesthetic and linguistic disciplines. The implications of the book extend beyond the art and literature of Latin America without loosing touch with the milieux o their origin. A dissident in his native Uruguay, Padin was one of the "Disappeared," released through the efforts of poets around the world from Dick Higgins to Geof Cooke. Exiled to Europe as condition of his release, this book was first published here before its first printing in Spain. An example of what the web can do for poets otherwise silenced.

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Selections from Visual Poems, 1967 - 1970
by Clemente Padin

Early work by Padin, showing synthesis of numerous trends in the world of visual poetry,from Concrete to Lettrism.

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4 WAYS to say NO
by Clemente Padin

These later Mail Art pieces stand in sharp contrast to the serene formalism of Padin's Visual Poems, engaged, angry, and socially committed. The work in this group and in Visual Poems make up two parts of Padin's ever evolving opus.

 

 
In Memory of Edgardo Antonio Vigo

Brief commentary and examples of work by the great and greatly unrecognized Argentine polymath of the Mail Art network. Includes his essay Process/Poetry to And/Or Realize, which was a cornerstone for theory and practice among Latin American poets of the late 20th Century.  

 
Contemporary Mexican Poetry: A Sketch Anthology
Edited by Carlos Adolfo Gutiérrez Vidal

A brief introduction to contemporary Mexican poetry in Spanish, for Anglophones who read the language. First part of a projected cooperative project for Mexicans, Chicanos, and Anglos interested in understanding both sides of the fortified U.S. - Mexican border.

 
Overview of the Biennials of Visual and Experimental Poetry in Mexico
by César Espinosa

The Mexico City Biennials have been focal points for experimental and avant-garde art and literature for Latin America during the last two decades. Espinosa, the main organizer of these events, tells their story, the historical and theoretical background for them, and sketches outlines for extensions of these festivals and exhibitions.

 
Selections of the Poetry of Próspero Saíz

Survey of poetry by one of a number of Chicanos at the Light and Dust site. Saíz seems particularly appropriate to include in this index, since he deals with indigenous Mexican material.

 

 
A visual poem by Maynard Sobral

Just one highly suggestive poem from a Brazilian poet who moves outside the mainstream of his country's sanctioned visual poetry. This is from one of the Kaldron Wall shows, sponsored by Kaldron magazine. How suggestive is this poem? How much more lies behind it in Sobral's opus and among other unafiliated poets who have been circulating their work through the world vis the Mail Art network? Checking them out is one of the things this site and the web in general is about.