Alejandro Pérez-Cortés
Ima and Coli Are the Tree That Was Never a Seed.
Akashic Books, Ltd., 2021. First edition. Translation by Sean Manning. Introduction by José Kozer. 9781636140704 253 pages.
Softcover volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9", displays mild wear, with lightly bumped lower outside corners of front cover and initial pages. Partially removed white sticker is affixed at lower inside corner of rear cover. Two black lines appear across bottom edge of text block. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and bright. Press kit material is laid in.
Winner of National Poetry Series' Paz Prize for Poetry.
""Ima and Coli Are the Tree That Was Never a Seed" is Alejandro Pérez-Cortés’s personal genesis of Colima, Mexico, published here in both English and Spanish. The tree is an element/character in the book that appears and disappears throughout. Some poems are set in an ancient pre-Hispanic Colima; others reflect the reality of a modern-day Colima, sadly stigmatized and eroded by violence perpetrated by the narcos.
In his introduction, preeminent Cuban poet José Kozer praises Pérez-Cortés: ""Ima and Coli Are the Tree That Was Never a Seed" comprises a voice that I consider poetic and that should be cared for and listened to with true interest. A voice that encompasses all, one that seeks to integrate, remake, and modify normative language when necessary, and to distort language that allows a better perception of the present and of everything that is historically behind a contemporary poet."
The Paz Prize for Poetry is presented by the National Poetry Series and Miami Book Fair at Miami Dade College and is awarded biennially. Named in the spirit of the late Nobel Prize–winning poet Octavio Paz, it honors a previously unpublished book of poetry written originally in Spanish by an American resident."