In the Company of Spirits
Carmen Calatayud's In the Company of Spirits was published in October 2012 as the second book in the Silver Concho Poetry Series by Press 53. In the Company of Spirits was selected by award-winning poets Pamela Uschuk and William Pitt Root, who are editors of Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts.
The cover art for In the Company of Spirits is a painting entitled "In the Company of Great Spirits" by Los Angeles artist Aydee López Martínez. López Martínez's art has been exhibited in Southern California, New York and Mexico. Visit her website at the link above to learn more about her art.
Praise for In the Company of Spirits
“Archangel Michael sticks
his finger down my throat/and now I have to tell your story.” writes Carmen Calatayud, in
a collection that slips admirably into one of American poetry’s most noble
strands—a poetry of testimonio where the poet uses her gift to weave narratives
rooted in a plethora of myths, at once familial, social, and political. These
stories are borne from the body and often interwoven with an undercurrent of
unrest or unease, even violence, as would be the case if one had a finger
jammed down one’s throat. The gaze in these poems is unflinching and drenched with imagination. In the Company of Spirits will indeed enrich the
ever-expanding mosaic of Latino/a poetry."
~Francisco Aragón, director
of Letras Latinas at University of Notre Dame;
editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino
Poetry; author of Glow of Our Sweat
and Puerta del Sol
“Carmen Calatayud’s courageous poems not only sing, but talk
straight from the heart about love and death, the everyday as well as the
inexplicable. These poems accomplish that rare feat of weaving a spell from the
first to last page that causes everything else to fall away. When she writes “In this corner of the desert, she has
already died. I pick up her broken mask, promise to glue it together again.” the
reader is swept up on a quest to give voice to those unable to speak. It is
this fearless desire to tell the truth that makes the poems in In the Company of Spirits matter.”
~Devreaux Baker, winner
of the 2011 PEN Oakland award for Red
Willow People
"There are two things I especially enjoy about Carmen’s poetry: one is the sort of spiritual/magical essence of her poems, and two is that her poems often feel very important--life and death important." ~Robert Lee Brewer, Poetic Asides Blog at WritersDigest.com
“Whether encompassing the political or the personal, the
spiritual or the everyday, Carmen Calatayud writes with a raw and painful
frankness, a sense of magical and lyrical wisdom, and a razor’s edge of rage. In the Company of Spirits is a
collection to be devoured on the first read, savored on the second, and taken
deep into the heart on the third, the fourth, and beyond.”
~Naomi Benaron,
winner of the 2010 Bellwether Prize for Fiction for Running the Rift
"The poems in In the Company of Spirits journey to the borderlands–between nations, languages, people, the living and dead–sending back essential dispatches on what is found there: war and violence but also richness and beauty, redemption and hope. Carmen Calatayud is our expert guide, leading us to that ultimate geographic border where we wrestle the angels of our lesser selves–our fears, our urges toward destruction–until we are reborn. Gorgeous, hurting, heartbreaking: these are the poems I’ll take on my own journey toward truth."
~Sarah Browning, director of Split This Rock Poetry Festival; author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden
"Carmen Calatayud’s poems are 'love stories from the ruins.' Unflinching and brave, her language winds through the wreckage of war zones and borderlands, but it also pauses to praise and to question the human heart. This inward and outward gaze, a blurring of the personal and the political, allows Calatayud to explore a larger lyrical space, to sing and to cry beneath 'black moons' and a 'pomegranate sun.' Beautifully crafted and beautifully humane, brimming with 'blood that blesses us all,' these poems survey the music and the decay around us."
~Eduardo C. Corral, winner of the 2011 Yale Younger Poets Prize for Slow Lightning
