E. A. "Tony" Mares (1938-2015) was a poet, playwright, essayist, fiction writer, and historian born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is the author of The Unicorn Poem and Flowers and Songs of Sorrow, With the Eyes of a Raptor, and Astonishing Light: Conversations I Never Had with Patrocino Barela (UNM Press).
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Description
Historical accounts through Mares's poetic visions present the poet, intellectual, and resolanero through a critical public dialogue, in a manner that evokes the conversations he overheard his parents having about the Spanish Civil War in his childhood home near La Plaza Vieja, Albuquerque's Old Town neighborhood. Mares draws the readers/eavesdroppers out of the corners and engages us to create our own musings and reminds us of the important role that poetry plays in keeping historical memory alive. The poems, illuminated by the twin flames of English and Spanish, present the same perspective but from a different angle. Or, as his camarada Tomas Atencio would say, 'Es el mismo guante, nomas que alrevez' (It is the same glove, inside out).--Levi Romero, Inaugural New Mexico State Poet Laureate and author of A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works In this tableau of poems, E. A. Tony Mares reconstructs the Spanish Civil War as the most iconic struggle of the twentieth century. Naming names, the poet tracks down and confronts the grand and petty players from all sides of that bloody conflict. From the refracted shards of language and the visceral, sensory details of the Spanish landscape, a towering vision emerges, leavened with the humility and humor that finally brings us home, to Tony's home, Albuquerque's Old Town Plaza.--Michael A. Thomas, author of Hat Dance It is one thing to read great poetry. It is another thing altogether to read poetry by a great man: prophet, historian, mentor and friend, world traveler; a man born in a time of war who would, in his actions and writings, rage against war, dream against war. Tony Mares in all his fullness is here, in a book that must be read as the world seems again to crack open. We need Tony's voice and vision as never before. This book will be a classic, and blessed are those in whose hands this book falls.--Demetria Martinez, author of The Block Captain's Daughter