Alberto Ríos
Poeta.
Fecha de nacimiento: 18 de septiembre de 1952, Nogales, Arizona, Estados Unidos
Educación: Universidad de Arizona (1979)
Bibliografía:
POESÍA:
His books of poems include
A Small Story About the Sky, Copper Canyon Press, 2015, ISBN 9781556594793
Alberto Ri’os (2009). The Dangerous Shirt. Copper Canyon Press. ISBN 978-1-55659-298-0. C1 control character in |author= at position 11 (help)
The Theater of Night, Copper Canyon Press, 2006, ISBN 9781556592591
The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body. Copper Canyon Press. 5 April 2014. pp. 106–. ISBN 978-1-61932-123-6. nominated for the National Book Award,
Teodoro Luna's Two Kisses W. W. Norton, Incorporated, 1992, ISBN 9780393308099
The Lime Orchard Woman Sheep Meadow Press, 1988, ISBN 9780935296778
The Warrington Poems, Pyracantha Press, Arizona State University, School of Art, 1989
Five Indiscretions The Sheep Meadow Press, 1985, ISBN 9780935296570
Whispering to Fool the Wind, Sheep Meadow Press, 1982, ISBN 9780935296303
Sleeping on Fists (Dooryard Press, 1981)
Elk Heads on the Wall(Mango Publications, 1979)
Spring in the Only Place Spring Was
CUENTOS CORTOS:
The Curtain of Trees
Pig Cookies
The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart. UNM Press. 1984. ISBN 978-0-8263-1922-7.
NO FICCIÓN:
Capirotada, University of New México Press, 1999, ISBN 9780826320940, a memoir about growing up on the Mexican border
PREMIOS:
2002 finalist for the National Book Award
At the request of Governor-elect Janet Napolitano, Ríos wrote and delivered a poem at Arizona's gubernatorial inauguration in 2003.
At Governor Napolitano's request, wrote a poem for the visit of President Vicente Fox of Mexico.
2002 recipient of the Western Literature Association's Distinguished Achievement Award
Arizona Governor's Arts Award
Guggenheim Foundation fellowship
National Endowment for the Arts fellowship
Walt Whitman Award
Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Literary Arts or Publications, AAHHE, 2004
Western States Book Award for Fiction
six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction
inclusion in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
inclusion in over 175 other national and international literary anthologies
selected as a 2005 Historymaker by the Arizona History Society's Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate, at Papago Park, Tempe, Arizona
2007 recipient of the PEN Open Book Award (formerly titled the Beyond Margins Award) for The Theater of Night
Once met Michael "El HefeGande" Padilla in an ASU function
Día de las Refugios
En México y en Latinoamérica es común
celebrar el día del santo en lugar del cumpleaños
Nací en Nogales, Arizona,
En la frontera entre
México y los Estados Unidos.
Los lugares entre lugares
Son como pequeños países
ellos mismos, con sus propias fiestas
Tomando un poco de todos lados.
Mi cuatro de julio es de la infancia,
La infancia misma es como un país, también.
Es un lugar ahora lejano,
Un lugar que quiero visitar de nuevo
El cuatro de julio me lleva ahí
A ese lugar de infancia lugar de frontera
El cuatro de julio, como todo lo demás,
Significaba más de una cosa.
En los Estados Unidos el cuatro de julio
Era los Estados Unidos
En México era el día de las Refugios,
El día del santo de aquellas llamadas Refugio.
Vengo de una familia de personas con nombres,
Nombres de verdad, nombres sin tapujos, con colores
Como fuegos artificiales: Refugio,
Margarito, Matilde, Álvaro, Consuelo,
Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto.
Nombres que tardan en decirse,
Nombres que hay que practicar.
Estos eran los nombres de santos serios,
Y estaba bien tardarse con ellos.
Creo que eso pensaba mi familia.
La conexión a los santos era fuerte:
El nombre de la abuela –aquí va–
Su nombre era Refugio,
Y el nombre de mi bisabuela era Refugio,
Y ahora el nombre de mi suegra,
Es también Refugio, Refugios en todos lados,
Refugios y cócteles de camarón y refrescos.
El cuatro de julio era una fiesta de cumpleaños
Para todas las mujeres en mi familia
Incluso diría, una fiesta
Para todo lo de México, de donde llegaron,
Para las otras palabras y las gafas
Verdes que mi bisabuela vistió.
Estas mujeres eran yo,
Estaban antes que yo,
Así que aquellos fuegos artificiales en la tarde,
Todos para ellas,
Esto me parecía bien,
En ese sentido yo también era aquellos fuegos artificiales.
Aún así, estábamos en los Estados Unidos
Y el cuatro de julio,
Bueno, era cuatro de julio.
Pero el significado de esto,
En este lugar y tiempo fronterizos,
era cuestión de opinión en mi familia.
Day of the Refugios
In Mexico and Latin America, celebrating one’s
Saint’s day instead of one’s birthday is common.
I was born in Nogales, Arizona,
On the border between
Mexico and the United States.
The places in between places
They are like little countries
Themselves, with their own holidays
Taken a little from everywhere.
My Fourth of July is from childhood,
Childhood itself a kind of country, too.
It’s a place that’s far from me now,
A place I’d like to visit again.
The Fourth of July takes me there.
In that childhood place and border place
The Fourth of July, like everything else,
It meant more than just one thing.
In the United States the Fourth of July
It was the United States.
In Mexico it was the día de los Refugios,
The saint’s day of people named Refugio.
I come from a family of people with names,
Real names, not-afraid names, with colors
Like the fireworks: Refugio,
Margarito, Matilde, Alvaro, Consuelo,
Humberto, Olga, Celina, Gilberto.
Names that take a moment to say,
Names you have to practice.
These were the names of saints, serious ones,
And it was right to take a moment with them.
I guess that’s what my family thought.
The connection to saints was strong:
My grandmother’s name–here it comes–
Her name was Refugio,
And my great-grandmother’s name was Refugio,
And my mother-in-law’s name now,
It’s another Refugio, Refugios everywhere,
Refugios and shrimp cocktails and sodas.
Fourth of July was a birthday party
For all the women in my family
Going way back, a party
For everything Mexico, where they came from,
For the other words and the green
Tinted glasses my great-grandmother wore.
These women were me,
What I was before me,
So that birthday fireworks in the evening,
All for them,
This seemed right.
In that way the fireworks were for me, too.
Still, we were in the United States now,
And the Fourth of July,
Well, it was the Fourth of July.
But just what that meant,
In this border place and time,
it was a matter of opinion in my family.
El cabello de Refugio
En los días pasados de nuestra familia,
Mi abuela era una mujer joven
Cuyo cabello era tan largo como el río.
Vivía con sus hermanas en el rancho
La Calera-Tierra del limón-
Y eran sus días felices,
Pero su tío Carlos vivía ahí también,
Carlos cuya alma tenía el filo del puñal.
Un día, para enseñarla a andar en caballo,
La hizo montar al más veloz,
Sin asiento, y sentarse ahí
mientras sostenía su cara larga en los brazos.
Y fue ahí que hizo lo innombrable
Por lo cual se le recordaría siempre:
Pidió al hermoso bebé Pirrín
Y lo puso en sus brazos.
Con esa imagen de Madonna a caballo
Golpeó el muslo trasero del caballo.
El caballo hizo lo que todo caballo hace,
Corriendo hacia el brillante horizonte.
Pero primero corrió bajo los álamos
Para quitarse el peso injusto:
Esta mujer llena de lágrimas
Y este bebé lleno de amor.
Cuando llegaron a los árboles y pasaron por debajo,
Su cabello, que la había seguido,
Igual de magnífico que la cola del cabello,
Ese cabello se elevó y voló entre las ramas
Como una millar de manos,
Todas queriendo salvarla.
El caballo corrió y la dejó,
Con el bebé aún en brazos,
Los dos colgando de su cabello.
El bebé la veía sólo a ella
Y no lloró, así de estable era su cuna.
Las hermanas vinieron a salvarlos.
Pero el cabello no se soltaba.
Seguía temeroso no se soltaba y tuvo que ser cortado,
Todo de su cabeza.
Desde aquel día, mi abuela
Usó el pelo corto como un grito,
Pero era largo como el río en sus sueños.
Versiones en español por Esteban López Arciga
Refugio’s Hair
In the old days of our family,
My grandmother was a young woman
Whose hair was as long as the river.
She lived with her sisters on the ranch
La Calera—The Land of the Lime—
And her days were happy.
But her uncle Carlos lived there too,
Carlos whose soul had the edge of a knife.
One day, to teach her to ride a horse,
He made her climb on the fastest one,
Bareback, and sit there
As he held its long face in his arms.
And then he did the unspeakable deed
For which he would always be remembered:
He called for the handsome baby Pirrín
And he placed the child in her arms.
With that picture of a Madonna on horseback
He slapped the shank of the horse’s rear leg.
The horse did what a horse must,
Racing full toward the bright horizon.
But first he ran under the álamo tres
To rid his back of this unfair weight:
This woman full of tears
And this baby full of love.
When they reached the trees and went under,
Her hair, which had trailed her,
Equal in its magnificence to the tail of the horse,
That hair rose up and flew into the branches
As if it were a thousand arms,
All of them trying to save her.
The horse ran off and left her,
The baby still in her arms,
The two of them hanging from her hair.
The baby looked only at her
And did not cry, so steady was her cradle.
Her sisters came running to save them.
But the hair would not let go.
From its fear it held on and had to be cut,
All of it, from her head.
From that day on, my grandmother
Wore her hair short like a scream,
But it was long like a river in her sleep.
La silla en la que ella se sienta
He oído esta cosa de que, cuando alguien muere,
la gente cierra todos los agujeros de la casa
—los ojos de las cerraduras, la chimenea, las ventanas,
incluso las bocas de los animales, los perros y los cerdos.
Es para que el alma no se confunda o sea tentada.
Es para que el alma salga del cuerpo en el que ha estado
Pero esto ya no funciona
Simplemente no entrará en otro cuerpo
E intentará sentirse como en casa,
pretendiendo que nada ha pasado.
No hay ningún misterio —es demasiado laborioso para seguir adelante.
No es culpa de nadie. Un alma es como cualquiera de nosotros.
Se acostumbra a las cosas, especialmente después de una larga vida.
El modo en el que me siento en la silla de mi sala.
La hendidura que he dejado allí
Después de tantos años —la entiendo ahora así.
Esta es mi silla
Y sé como sentarme en ella.
Versión de Santiago Matías
The Chair She Sits In
I’ve heard this thing where, when someone dies,
People close up all the holes around the house—
The keyholes, the chimney, the windows,
Even the mouths of the animals, the dogs and the pigs.
It’s so the soul won’t be confused, or tempted.
It’s so when the soul comes out of the body it’s been in
But that doesn’t work anymore,
It won’t simply go into another one
And try to make itself at home,
Pretending as if nothing happened.
There’s no mystery—it’s too much work to move on.
It isn’t anybody’s fault. A soul is like any of us.
It gets used to things, especially after a long life.
The way I sit in my living-room chair,
The indentation I have put in it now
After so many years—that’s how I understand.
It’s my chair,
And I know how to sit in it.
Nautical Astronomy
Nautical astronomyis defined simply as:
The science of locating oneself at sea.
The map is wet, but usable.
In the vast water, the stars see themselves,
And in the sky, boats find their direction.
It is a kinship of depths and black-greens.
We do not sail on the seas-any of us.
All our lives we sail in between them.
The Sheet Music of Place
1.
The river through its centuries has made a line on this place,
A child's line,wanting to be straight but distracted at every move,
A little left, a little fast, around a big rock, sliding straight away
Through sand, thiscrawling, leaden line echoing
The line made by the tops of the mountains in silhouette against the sky.
The railroad track makes another line, a double line-
The highway, too, and the telephone poles strung with wire.
All these lines work in sure if uneasy concert
Written on the arid air of this place, which has made everything
Dry and white,off-white, some darks but on their way to white,
All this landscape a great and delicate paper.
2.
These lines make a musical staff borrowed from the world of dream,
The world that then fills these lines with its profundo notations,
The careful placement of one moving thing next to another,
The train engine and its cars-those drudging bass notes,
Birds everywhere in their thrill, 64th notes every one,
Everything scored onto the pages of this world suddenly heard.
Day and night, that ceaseless baton, unforgiving metronome:
Bees lumber along but their work is to stop, whole stops and half,
Busy at their honeying, these respites of work, these moments loud
Too-resting the ear so as to hear composed this place into music-
Every sound a new performance of the great song of this world.
My Criminal Notebook
I am stealing things All the time.
I steal what I can from everywhere,
The light, the air, The music that matters most to me.
I carry them away neatly, invisible in word
Valises, inside unfathomable
Thoughts, attached to the magnet
Harvest of a song I'm singing-nobody,
Nobody is the wiser- I carry everything away with me
Using rhyme dollies and spelling knots.
The police have not caught on.
But I am at large,
Unwieldy, and unstoppable.
I walk freely
Every day, anywhere, all the time
In spite of having stolen
Horses and kisses-the stars themselves,
More than one, more than once.
I steal, I steal,
I have always stolen.
Be careful of me. When you see me,
Speak quietly and do little.
Do not let me notice you.
Get away
If you want to be safe.
Get away.
That Thing
No word rhymes with silence, or tries to.
No word wants to visit that furtive backyard garden.
Silence is the word that will not be spoken-
After all, who can pronounce it? Once spoken,
We will not hear it. It is the story not told,
The memory carefully unspoken in this house,
Your house. Silenceis the place underneath language
An unto-itself, an army
Stronger than words, more patient,
Bigger than the dictionary.
Its weapons are familiar,
Painful, without antidote and giving of no respite.
Quiet tells us it iscoming, and so, too,
Quiet is tolerated, left to be, undisturbed at its work,
Silence's grim reaper, allowed only to make deliveries,
To fill the bins, to cut the grass, eat if it needs to,
Then expected to leave, quickly, cleanly,
No trace afterward, no errant grass cuttings,
No black from the bottom of its shoes on the floor.
Good bye, we say, and in saying
Mispronounce its name, but happy not to know,
Ready not to ask. Good-bye, we say, and mean it.
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