Wings Press

Here are poems from the heart of a committed activist side-by-side with poems of personal insight. Catching sunsets that greet her "with a different face / each time I make my way back home / to desert," Monsivaís finds both courage and inspirationsomewhere between Houston and El Paso.

Carolina Monsivias's approach toward art frees us to enjoy our roles as writers, teachers, activists. She has a gift for telling stories that are provoking and moving through the most essential elements of poetry. Hard hitting but uplifting; tough as nails but soft as a kiss, this is art that forges a new imagination where we can revel in the horror and the glory of the human experience.

"I drop a rope inside myself and with callused hands covered with blood I pull on the rope that has my strength on the other end."

So reads an untitled poem, descending like a rope down a page in Carolina Monsivais' small book of poetry "Somewhere between Houston and El Paso," (Wings Press, $14 paperback).

Monsivais, a youth outreach counselor in Houston, grew up in El Paso's East Side and attended Eastwood High School. She graduated from the University of Houston and, while there, began writing poetry. She also began counseling women and children who had been victims of violence.

Monsivais describes how for years she counseled the same woman who would come into the counseling center -- though not really the same woman, but each time another woman in the same situation: "She arrives stifled / she arrives in silence / she arrives calculating / she arrives wearing the face of too many women."

The poet's work won the Premio Poesia Tejana Prize, and she was awarded the city of Houston/Harris County Individual Artist Grant.

"Somewhere Between" has a style reminiscent of Lorna Dee Cervantes with the thirst for human rights of Abelardo B. Delgado. Women play a big role in Monsivais' poetry, which includes poems about a sister, grandmother, a mother with cancer and many nameless women with fresh wounds delivered by their spouses.

In one poem, the poet even describes fellow El Pasoan Cecilia Rodriguez. In the poem, Rodriguez, Monsivais describes the Zapatista rebellion of 1994 to a Houston audience: "She brought to us stories of pueblerinos whose names we'd later write on paper tombs during a protest of their massacre." The title poem states,

As always, I anticipate the sunset
that greets me with a different face
each time I make my way back home
to desert, I carry always right
below skin in sand-swept pulses,
It drops red, behind mountains ... .

Monsivais' work is one that the reader will soak up and cherish. Her future looks bright, and we hope she keeps her pen flowing.

Here are poems from the heart of a committed activist side-by-side with poems of personal insight. Catching sunsets that greet her "with a different face / each time I make my way back home / to desert," Monsivaís finds both courage and inspirationsomewhere between Houston and El Paso. -- Bryce Milligan, Editor, Daughters of the Fifth Sun, ÁFloricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry, etc.

Carolina Monsivias's approach toward art frees us to enjoy our roles as writers, teachers, activists. She has a gift for telling stories that are provoking and moving through the most essential elements of poetry. Hard hitting but uplifting; tough as nails but soft as a kiss, this is art that forges a new imagination where we can revel in the horror and the glory of the human experience. -- Tony Diaz, author of The Aztec Love God, editor of the anthology Latino Heretics

From the El Paso Times (Sunday, April 27, 2003): Poetry details life in Houston to El Paso area, by Raymundo Eli Rojas

"I drop a rope inside myself and with callused hands covered with blood I pull on the rope that has my strength on the other end."

So reads an untitled poem, descending like a rope down a page in Carolina Monsivais' small book of poetry "Somewhere between Houston and El Paso," (Wings Press, $14 paperback).

Monsivais, a youth outreach counselor in Houston, grew up in El Paso's East Side and attended Eastwood High School. She graduated from the University of Houston and, while there, began writing poetry. She also began counseling women and children who had been victims of violence.

Monsivais describes how for years she counseled the same woman who would come into the counseling center -- though not really the same woman, but each time another woman in the same situation: "She arrives stifled / she arrives in silence / she arrives calculating / she arrives wearing the face of too many women."

The poet's work won the Premio Poesia Tejana Prize, and she was awarded the city of Houston/Harris County Individual Artist Grant.

"Somewhere Between" has a style reminiscent of Lorna Dee Cervantes with the thirst for human rights of Abelardo B. Delgado. Women play a big role in Monsivais' poetry, which includes poems about a sister, grandmother, a mother with cancer and many nameless women with fresh wounds delivered by their spouses.

In one poem, the poet even describes fellow El Pasoan Cecilia Rodriguez. In the poem, Rodriguez, Monsivais describes the Zapatista rebellion of 1994 to a Houston audience: "She brought to us stories of pueblerinos whose names we'd later write on paper tombs during a protest of their massacre." The title poem states,

As always, I anticipate the sunset
that greets me with a different face
each time I make my way back home
to desert, I carry always right
below skin in sand-swept pulses,
It drops red, behind mountains ... .

Monsivais' work is one that the reader will soak up and cherish. Her future looks bright, and we hope she keeps her pen flowing. -- Copyright 2003, El Paso Times. All Rights Reserved. Used by permission of the author.

Raymundo Eli Rojas is the editor of Pluma Fronteriza (plumafronterizamsn.com), a publication dedicated to Latino and Chicano writers in the El Paso-Juarez-Las Cruces region.