Oliver de la Paz

The Diaspora Sonnets is a beautiful, evocative and lyrical colleciton of sonnets. It speaks from the heart and it does so eloquently. It lays bare lives and souls of a family fleeing a beloved homeland and arriving in a vast, unfamiliar land which does not welcome them with open arms. These snippets of a family's striving to find "place" show us glimpses of nomadic lifestyle, never able to take root while traveling from field to field, state to state. And a constant yearning for the lush green landscape of home and the call of family split asunder back there. Telling the story of the anguishing experience of the author's family, it speaks of countless others whose words we have never heard. Between sections there are transitional elements in the form of Pantoums, a Malaysian poetic form consisting of quatrains. It is quite cleverly done.

The writing is sublime. Only recently have I discovered that I knew almost nothing of poetry and its forms and strictures. I find it amazing and the author has done an outstanding job with this book of sonnets and I am much enriched as a result of having read it. Not to mention a little more informed on poetry as well!… (más)

The poems in this collection follow Fidelito and his family from the Philippines to the United States. I enjoyed how different folk tales weave into the family story, particularly the bird imagery. De la Paz is clearly a talented poet--among my favorites in the collection are "Insects in Maria Elena's Kitchen," "Fidelito Sails over Manila," "School Years," "The Fourth Madonna," and "An Anatomy of Birds." Three and a half stars; I really did enjoy this.

Here is one of my favorite excerpts from "At Sea Domingo Learned to Steady His Hand" (Fidelito watches his father shaving):

The faucet's slurred talk: a hair the drain could not swallow, the sounds of / a wet deck's sway as sea-storms rock iron ships like empty plastic cups in / the wind.

Fidelito's father, his eyes filled with boats and sailor's boots, steadies / himself by spreading his feet wide like the stance of a man guarding a / door, like a man whose balance is turned by wave-crest and spume at the / hull side. The blade's prow cuts through the Pacific, past the mountains of / his face like a tiller, like the furrow of his boy's forehead in surprise when / Domingo cuts himself and the water in the sink blossoms.… (más)