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The Road
to Iguazú is a chronicle of my
journeys through Latin America seeking poets and poetry. Each chapter tells the story of the poetry of a country or a
region: Mexico, Chiapas, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay,
culminating with the great Festival of Poetry in Medellín. It is travelogue and literary history with an epic
sweep through a whole continent of the politics of poetry, which is always personal.
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A Lucky Woman is a collaborative biography of my mother, Frances Adler. When her
parents, the granddaughter of a Mayor of San Francisco and the son of the owner of the largest whorehouse on the
Barbary Coast, married in Menlo Park in 1907, it was the social event of the season. Frances escaped from her
conservative Catholic upbringing, married a Jewish theatrical press agent, lived in Greenwich Village, joined the
Communist Party, fought her way out of a loveless marriage, found true love in midlife and ended up as the matriarch of
a "super-hyper-overextended-family" in Berkeley, saving the most sensational revelation for her deathbed.Alternating
chapters told by mother and son. A memoir that reads like a novel. |
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The Book of Raven is an alternate-history novel set in a contemporary California in
which Hernán Cortés was killed while escaping from Tenochtitlán on the Noche Triste in 1520 and the
Americas were never conquered by Europe. Finished fourth draft and currently on back burner while concentrating on
poetry and translation. |
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John Oliver
Simon