Strong Box Heart
by Sheila Sànchez Hatch
0-930324-53-6 || Cost: $14.00
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Critical Praise for Strong Box Heart
If Sheila Sánchez Hatch did not exist, we would have to invent her -- so necessary is she as a bonafide role model for the young Latina writer of today. A serious writer of depth and integrity, she is 100% Tejana . . . and her mestiza guns are loaded.
— Angela de Hoyos
The poems of Sheila Sánchez Hatch arrive full of the persistence of cactus and singing bold revolution.
-- Pat Mora— Pat Mora
There are thoughts and experiences spread through these pages like buried jewels. Selected phrases, inspired and entrancing, pull at the imagination behind the memory behind the soul. Brief images are verses rediscovered from a song centuries old, and it is when Sánchez Hatch explores the images of our origins that she is strongest, calling us to a "lush life" with Tlaloc and to "never leave the soft tropics of his heart." But it is when she confronts the present, in poems like "murderTV," "35," and "the movies aren't me," that she is the most interesting and the most courageous.
— Carmen Tafolla
Poet and San Antonio native Sheila Sanchez Hatch gives us a second collection of poetry, following the publication of Guadalupe and the Kaleidoscopic Screamer (Wings, 1996). Her words reflect literary images from sources as diverse and distant as Aztec mythology to Kafka. Some of the poems are deeply personal with cryptic references to events and people in the poet's own life. Others are as universal as decrying television's waste of human hours. Her voice reflects a duality of cultural experience, like ancient roots struggling to bloom in modern soil.
In a style reminiscent of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen, whose verse was influenced by his love of British romantic poetry, these poems reflect the author's academic background. In the 1920s, Cullen wrote: "I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth and laid them away in a box of gold." In the present century, more open to poets of color, Sanchez Hatch writes in her title poem: "Our only strong box is out heart; unlocked, left open. . . . " The poetry of Strong Box Heart is skillfully written, reflecting personal experience through images infused with an academic acquaintance with literature. Recommended.
— Mary Clare Wickins, in REFORMA Newsletter, Fall 2000
Reviews
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If Sheila Sánchez Hatch did not exist, we would have to invent her -- so necessary is she as a bonafide role model for the young Latina writer of today. A serious writer of depth and integrity, she is 100% Tejana . . . and her mestiza guns are loaded. -- Angela de Hoyos
The poems of Sheila Sánchez Hatch arrive full of the persistence of cactus and singing bold revolution. -- Pat Mora
There are thoughts and experiences spread through these pages like buried jewels. Selected phrases, inspired and entrancing, pull at the imagination behind the memory behind the soul. Brief images are verses rediscovered from a song centuries old, and it is when Sánchez Hatch explores the images of our origins that she is strongest, calling us to a "lush life" with Tlaloc and to "never leave the soft tropics of his heart." But it is when she confronts the present, in poems like "murderTV," "35," and "the movies aren't me," that she is the most interesting and the most courageous. -- Carmen Tafolla
Poet and San Antonio native Sheila Sanchez Hatch gives us a second collection of poetry, following the publication of Guadalupe and the Kaleidoscopic Screamer (Wings, 1996). Her words reflect literary images from sources as diverse and distant as Aztec mythology to Kafka. Some of the poems are deeply personal with cryptic references to events and people in the poet's own life. Others are as universal as decrying television's waste of human hours. Her voice reflects a duality of cultural experience, like ancient roots struggling to bloom in modern soil.
In a style reminiscent of Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen, whose verse was influenced by his love of British romantic poetry, these poems reflect the author's academic background. In the 1920s, Cullen wrote: "I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth and laid them away in a box of gold." In the present century, more open to poets of color, Sanchez Hatch writes in her title poem: "Our only strong box is out heart; unlocked, left open. . . . " The poetry of Strong Box Heart is skillfully written, reflecting personal experience through images infused with an academic acquaintance with literature. Recommended. -- Mary Clare Wickins, in REFORMA Newsletter, Fall 2000
From the Dallas Morning News:
Another of this year's offerings [from Wings] is Sheila Sánchez Hatch's latest collection, Strong Box Heart. The poems in this volume ar by turns sensual, ironic, jesting and insistent: bold, honest work, delivered in packets of pure wordcraft. Consider "The Movies Aren't Me," which ends:
I might be brown but I'm no one's maid and I'm not Hollywood exotic don't drink margaritas I'm not plotting against anyone or hoping for someone else's husband I was never in a gang so you see I'm not with MGM or on NBC ABC, e-t-c. all the same quite glad the movies aren't me
The stereotype-busting is handled deftly here, but the poet's final twist adds something fresh to the familiar charge of media bias. "All the same" works equally as a comment on the networks and studios and as a lead-in to her final point that the media images do not do justice to the life she lives. This is a reality . . . that adds texture and new meaning to our observance of Hispanic Heritage Month. -- Tom Mayo, Dallas Morning News, October 1, 2000
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Dallas Morning NewsOctober 1, 2000
Another of this year's offerings [from Wings] is Sheila Sánchez Hatch's latest collection, Strong Box Heart. The poems in this volume ar by turns sensual, ironic, jesting and insistent: bold, honest work, delivered in packets of pure wordcraft. Consider "The Movies Aren't Me," which ends:
I might be brown but I'm no one's maid and I'm not Hollywood exotic don't drink margaritas I'm not plotting against anyone or hoping for someone else's husband I was never in a gang so you see I'm not with MGM or on NBC ABC, e-t-c. all the same quite glad the movies aren't me
The stereotype-busting is handled deftly here, but the poet's final twist adds something fresh to the familiar charge of media bias. "All the same" works equally as a comment on the networks and studios and as a lead-in to her final point that the media images do not do justice to the life she lives. This is a reality . . . that adds texture and new meaning to our observance of Hispanic Heritage Month.
About This Author
Read more about Sheila Sànchez Hatch HERE.
