Borderless Butterflies / Mariposas sin fronteras

Borderless Butterflies: Earth Haikus and Other Poems / Mariposas sin fronteras: Haikus terrenales y otros poemas by Francisco X. Alarcón is a bi-lingual book of poems in Spanish and English for the earth and the people, crafted by a poet at the peak of his power. It speaks to the porousness of our boundaries, and the futility of all attempts to separate people and regions so intimately intertwined. Alarcón is a man who, like the monarch butterfly he eulogizes, lives in and migrates between many worlds. From Los Angeles to Guadalajara, from the Mission barrio in San Francisco to Stanford and UC Davis, he has lived fully immersed in the diverse cultural landscape of California and Mexico. Prevalent in Alarcón's works, as Francisco Aragón states in his insightful blurb, is "an indigenous spirituality that makes no distinction between animal (including humans), vegetable, and mineral." Without a doubt Francisco is inspired by his Mesoamerican heritage and poets like Nezahualcoyotl. He is inspired also by the Sufi mystic poet Rumi, the mystic poets of the Golden Age in Spain as well as by Federico García Lorca and more contemporary poets - revolutionary poet Roque Dalton of El Salvador and groundbreaking Chicana poet/essayist Gloria Anzaldúa. But the haiku, senryū, and tanka forms of the Japanese poetic tradition give shape to many of his "winged poems," the meta-poetic butterflies of this collection that come to Francisco so effortlessly.

Author: Francisco X. Alarcón
Publisher: Poetic Matrix Press
Published: 09/26/2014
Pages: 159
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.63lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.41d
ISBN: 9780986060045

About the Author
Alarcon, Francisco X.: - Francisco X. Alarcón (born in Los Angeles, in 1954, and raised in Guadalajara, Mexico) is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, and a number of books of bilingual poetry for children. His books include: BORDERLESS BUTTERFLIES: EARTH HAIKUS AND OTHER POEMS / MARIPOSAS SIN FRONTERAS: HAIKUS TERRENALES Y OTROS POEMAS (Poetic Matrix Press, 2014), CE UNO ONE: POEMAS PARA EL NUEVO SOL/POEMS FOR THE NEW SUN (Swan Scythe Press, 2010), SONNETS TO MADNESS AND OTHER MISFORTUNES (Creative Arts Book Company, 2001), and DE AMOR OSCURO / OF DARK LOVE (Moving Parts Press, 1992). He has won many awards and fellowships, including the Danforth and Fulbright fellowships, and the 1993 Carlos Pellicer-Robert Frost Poetry Honor Award, the 1993 American Book Award, the 1993 PEN-Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and the 1984 Chicano Literary Prize. In April 2002 he received the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) in San Francisco. He teaches at the University of California, Davis.

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