Outside The Lines,

A literary column

By Marcia Diane

Well we all know these submissions are a month out, so it’s trick for us writers to use our imaginations and place ourselves over there. I just imagine a cooling breeze coming off the sea and the air becoming crisp…and by the time we all read the September issue of our beloved newspaper we will indeed be that much closer to the passing of the monsoon.

OK, on to our poet of the month. I spent some good down time in research and unearthed a lovely volume entitled Mouth To Mouth. This is an anthology of contemporary Mexican women poets. There are twelve poetisas featured and I really recommend each of them. The volume presents the poems in Spanish and then the English translation opposite.

This lovely very short poem by Elva Macías is enchanting. Elva was born in 1944 and has had a long and fruitful career in the literary arts as well as visual arts. Her maternal grandfather was a popular poet best known for his work Himno a Chiapas.

Elva has traveled extensively and worked in China and Russia. She has lived and written in extraordinary times and yet is a very traditional Mexican woman of solid commitment to her people and her country.

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Nostalgia

Girasol

que aun arrancado de su tallo

sigue atento al desplazamiento del sol.

Nostalgia

The sunflower

even torn from its stalk

still follows, attentive, the movement of the sun.

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I’d like to close listing the remaining eleven poetisas. Their work is breath taking and well worth searching out.

Silvia Tomasa Rivera, Mónica Mansour, Carmen Boullosa, Kyra Galván, Elena Milán

Gloria Gervitz, Isabel Fraire, Elas Cross, Verónica Volkow, Myriam Moscona, y Coral Bracho.

Join us, won’t you, for our on-line monthly writing group at m.diane.writeon@gmail.com