Overview
A masterful collection of poems rooted in Kāicheā Maya culture illustrating all the ways meaning manifests within our world, and how best to behold it.
āMy language was born among trees, / it holds the taste of earth; / my ancestorsā tongue is my home.ā So writes Humberto Akāabal, a Kāicheā Maya poet born in Momostenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala. A legacy of land and language courses through the pages of this spirited collection, offering an expansive take on this internationally renowned poetās work.
Written originally in the Indigenous Kāicheā language and translated from the Spanish by acclaimed poet Michael Bazzett, these poems blossom from the landscape that raised Akāabalāmountains covered in cloud forest, deep ravines, terraced fields of maize. His unpretentious verse models a contraconquistaācounter-conquestāperspective, one that resists the impulse to impose meaning on the world and encourages us to receive it instead. āIn church,ā he writes, āthe only prayer you hear / comes from the trees / they turned into pews.ā Every living thing has its song, these poems suggest. We need only listen for it.
Attuned, uncompromising, Akāabal teaches readers to recognize grace in every earthly observationāin the wind, carrying a forgotten name. In the roots, whose floral messengers ātell us / what earth is like / on the inside.ā Even in the birds, who āsing in mid-flight / and shit while flying.ā At turns playful and pointed, this prescient entry in the Seedbank series is a transcendent celebration of both Kāicheā indigeneity and Akāabalās lifetime of work.
This book title, If Today Were Tomorrow (Poems), ISBN: 9781571311610, by Humberto Ak'abal, Michael Bazzett, published by Milkweed Editions (June 25, 2024) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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