The Wind Shifts

The Wind Shifts gathers, for the first time, works by emerging Latino and Latina poets in the twenty-first century. Here readers will discover 25 new and vital voices including Naomi Ayala, Richard Blanco, David Dominguez, Gina Franco, Sheryl Luna, and Urayoán Noel. All of the writers included in this volume have published poetry in well-regarded literary magazines. Some have published chapbooks or first collections, but none had published more than one book at the time of selection. This results in a freshness that energizes the enterprise.
Certainly there is poetry here that is political, but this is not a polemical book; it is a poetry book. While conscious of their roots, the artists are equally conscious of living in the contemporary world—fully engaged with the possibilities of subject and language. The variety is tantalizing. There are sonnets and a sestina; poems about traveling and living overseas; poems rooted in the natural world and poems embedded in suburbia; poems nourished by life on the U.S.–Mexico border and poems electrified by living in Chicago or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York City.
Some of the poetry is traditional; some is avant-garde; some is informed by traditional poetry in Spanish; some follows English forms that are hundreds of years old. There are love poems, spells that defy logic, flashes of hope, and moments of loss. In short, this is the rich and varied poetry of young, talented North American Latinos and Latinas.

"The title of the ravishing collection of poems by 25 Latino and Latina writers can be read as an allusion to change and to the fact that poetry is a force, like wind, that knows no borders. Whether inspired by family, love, despair, poems by Rilke, or a painting by Jose Clemente Orozco, the poets gathered here are involved in the infinite possibilities of language." —Booklist "This is a compelling and exhilarating addition to Latino letters." —El Paso Times Foreword by Juan Felipe Herrera xiii
Preface xviii
Introduction
Rosa Alcalá
Francisco Aragón
Naomi Ayala
Richard Blanco
Brenda Cárdenas
Albino Carrillo
Steven Cordova
Eduardo C. Corral
David Dominguez
John Olivares Espinoza
Gina Franco
Venessa Maria Engel-Fuentes
Kevin A. González
David Hernandez
Scott Inguito
Sheryl Luna
Carl Marcum
María Meléndez
Carolina Monsivais
Adela Najarro
Urayoán Noel
Deborah Parédez
Emmy Pérez
Paul Martínez Pompa
Lidia Torres
About the Contributors
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Source Notes