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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