Hispanic Sonnets

In Alex Z. Salinas’ previous poetry collections, he commenced conversation between the damaged body politic within himself and the bizarre, sometimes beautiful dream worlds of writers, painters and musicians-Muses-living and dead. In Hispanic Sonnets, the dials are turned up, the stakes (whatever they may be) are heavier, and the chorus of voices is louder, clearer. Hispanic Sonnets is part homage to the venerated and part turning the other cheek. In the final section of this book, a series of 15-line, free-verse sonnets continue the dialogue Salinas started in South Texas, or, to him, the center of his heart. This collection is the dream the poet still lives in, shattered and stitched back together with family, love, loss, pride and dignity; in short, Hispanic Sonnets is the book that least embarrasses him.  A note on Hispanic sonnetsWhat is a Hispanic sonnet? It is a 15-line, free-verse poem with a separated last line as its ownstanza. Each Hispanic sonnet’s second and final stanza-that lonely little manmadeisland-serves as its volta, or turn, meaning that where the poem ends in idea, tone, or spirit isnot necessarily where it begins.Let it be known, then: a Hispanic sonnet is not really a sonnet.Shakespeare transformed the 14-line English sonnet. Petrarch perfected the much-older 14-lineItalian sonnet. Wanda Coleman dazzled with her rule-busting, 14-line American sonnets, andTerrance Hayes carried her tradition to new heights.Corpus Christi’s first Poet Laureate, Alan Berecka, informed me that writers he’d encounteredhave penned 15-line sonnets called quince sonnets. Having never attended a quinceañera or aquinceañero, I-a non-Spanish-speaking South Texan-smiled upon learning this grain ofpoetry’s organic history. Quince sonnets seemed to me, naturally, inevitable. The sweetest,tangiest apples and oranges ever within reach.The poet Iliana Rocha, whom I had the pleasure to read with on a virtual open mic, has authoreda beautiful, 18-line (by my count) poem titled 'Mexican American Sonnet.' Juan Felipe Herrera,former United States Poet Laureate and the first Hispanic appointed to that role, once told mehe’d removed commas from a poem after having mastered them.It is in this shadow, perhaps, that I arrived at the Hispanic sonnet, whose name is the onlyinvention herein I claim. The chasm between two stanzas representing everything andnothing-the worst and best of what we are capable of in community and in solitude.Everything else remains an inevitability.