Emplumada

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1981

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Related Poems

“Four Portraits of Fire” by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1982)

In this poem, also from the collection Emplumada, Cervantes employs and considers some of the same elements and images woven through “Emplumada”—wind and birds, for example. The color “umber” appears here, too, as something without heat, drained of life.

“To My Brother” by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1982)

Another poem from Emplumada, this poem serves as witness to an impoverished childhood in an urban environment, as well as tribute to the beloved brother who lived it, too. In the final stanza, the speaker envisions the dreams of the siblings flying over the city “skyline like crazy meteors” (Lines 22-23).

“Love of My Flesh, Living Death” by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1991)

From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (1991) from Arte Público Press, this poem from Cervantes’ second collection uses imagery of feathers and birds to create an elegy for a lost or absent love. The dedication, after García Lorca, suggests that the poet has written the poem with an eye toward the surrealism and symbolism for which the Spanish poet, Lorca, is known.

“To Live in the Borderlands” by Gloria Anzaldúa (1987)

In this poem, Anzaldúa considers the difficulties and challenges, as well as the unexpected integrations, inherent to the cross-cultural experience of living and surviving in the spaces between nations and hard identities. The poet uses Spanish alongside English without providing specific translation, a choice that allows the reader to both/either interpret through proximity and context and/or forego literal understanding.

“Placa/Rollcall” by Brenda Cárdenas (2016)

Part of the project, Pintura : Palabra, a collaboration and exhibit wherein writers responded to visual artists’ work (and in which Lorna Dee Cervantes also participated), this prose poem is a multilingual ode to identity and the power of the written word via graffiti.

Further Literary Resources

Emplumada by Lorna Dee Cervantes (1981)

This is Cervantes’ debut collection, published by University of Pittsburgh Press, and winner of the 1982 American Book Award.

“Journal, Day One” by Lorna Dee Cervantes (2006)

In her August 28, 2008, contribution to Harriet Blog on Poetry Foundation, Cervantes exuberantly fulfills her self-appointed, self-actualized role as cultivator of poetry and poetry community. She praises the poetry blogosphere as a welcoming and inclusive place that, at its best, is big on generosity and light on judgement. She concludes with a poem.

“Latinopia Book Review of Emplumada” reviewed by Thelma T. Reyna (2012)

This review of the collection, Emplumada (1981), offers praise for Cervantes’ contributions to Chicana poetry, as well as for the specific poems in the book. The review considers how Cervantes’ 39 poems treat the social issues that continue to “rattle our sensibilities: poverty, domestic and drug abuse, sexism, racism, classism” (Reyna, 2012).

“A Conversation with Lorna Dee Cervantes” by World Literature Today (2010)

In this interview with Jeanetta Calhoun Mish for World Literature Today, Cervantes discusses the intersections of her poetry and activism, and the role social media can play in both art, activism, and community.

“Love, Hunger, and grace: loss and belonging in the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes and Joy Harjo” (2002)

In her article in Vol.19, issue 1 of “Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers” from the University of Nebraska Press, Eliza Rodriguez Y Gibson argues that the poetry of Lorna Dee Cervantes and the poetry of Joy Harjo create “a poetics that embraces loss and the grief that comes from identifying with the survivors of genocide and the dispossessed” (Gibson, 2002), rather than support a strictly nationalist and/or revisionist perspective on diverse Chicana/o and Native American histories and experiences.

“A Politics of Mere Being” by Carl Phillips (2016)

In this essay by poet and critic Carl Phillips for Poetry Foundation, Phillips discusses his own experience navigating the politics of the personal regarding critical perception of his work, as well as his role and persona within the poetry community.

In his essay, Phillips brings up the ekphrastic project, Pintura : Palabra, in which Cervantes participated. He argues that the curator of the portfolio, Francisco Aragón, was looking to forefront a wide-ranging poetry, as opposed to a “self-limiting” poetry—a poetry open to a wide range of interpretation across both personal and political landscapes.