Francisco X. Alarcón

Francisco X. Alarcón

Francisco X. Alarcón
Born February 21, 1954
Wilmington, California
Language Spanish; English
Nationality United States
Alma mater California State University, Long Beach;
Stanford University
Genre Poetry
Notable awards 1993 American Book Award

Francisco Xavier Alarcón (born 21 February 1954 Wilmington, California) is an award-winning Chicano and American poet and educator. He is one of the few Chicano poets to have "gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish."[1] His poems have been also translated into Gaelic and Swedish.[2] He makes many guest appearances at public schools so that he can help inspire and influence young people to write their own poetry.[2] He feels that children are "natural poets."[3] He lives in Davis, California.

Life

Alarcón was born in Wilmington, California.[4] He has four brothers and two sisters.[2] He moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, when he was 6 and then moved back to California when he was eighteen.[2] He feels that he became a writer when he was fifteen and helped transcribe his grandmother's own songs which were created in the tradition of ballads.[4] His grandmother was a native speaker of Nahuatl.[2]

He graduated from California State University, Long Beach, and Stanford University.[2] In 1982 he discovered Aztec native incantations translated by a Mexican priest while on a Fulbright Fellowship to Mexico City.[5] These later inspired the poems in Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation.[5]

He and fellow poets Juan Pablo Gutierrez and Rodrigo Reyes founded Las Cuarto Espinas, the first gay Chicano poets collective, in 1985.[6]

He teaches at the University of California, Davis,[7] and is the co-author of Mundo 21, a Spanish-language method published by Cengage Learning.[8][9]

In response to a group of students chaining themselves to the Arizona State Capitol on April 20, 2010, to protest the anti-immigrant legislation Arizona SB 1070, Alarcón penned the poem "For the Capitol Nine" and posted it to his Facebook page.[10] Prompted by the response to this poem, he created a Facebook group called "Poets Responding to SB 1070", which grew to include over 1200 poems and received over 600,000 hits.[11] An anthology of poems from the group is being prepared for publication.[12]

Alarcón judged the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize.[13]

Poetry

Alarcón writes poetry in English, Spanish and Nahuatl, often presented to the reader in a bilingual format.[14] His poetry is considered minimalist in style.[1] Alarcon revises as necessary, cutting out anything he feels does not add to the poem.[4] Connection to his culture and language, both Spanish and English are important to him.[4] Being able to speak more than one language has been important to him and its something he tries to impart to children and their caregivers.[4] Alarcon attempts to write his poetry in a bilingual fashion, but feels that not all concepts translate properly.[4] He also thinks that poetry is best read aloud.[15] He does not use periods in his writing because his poems are an extension of his life, he feels, and a period would indicate the end, or his death.[15] He says he tends to write his poetry on secretarial style, yellow blocks of paper by hand.[15]

Alarcon doesn't plan his poetry out in advance and doesn't write with a firm plan in mind.[4] Instead, he allows his poetry to form in an organic sense, where the poem grows naturally from his own feelings.[4]

Alarcón is "highly-regarded" for his children's poetry.[14] He started writing poetry for children in 1997 when he realized there where very few books for children written by Latino poets.[15] It took him a few years to sell a publisher on the idea of bilingual poems for children, because publishers didn't think they would sell very well in the United States.[3] Kirkus Reviews has called his work on the children's book, Animal Poems of the Iguazu, as "eloquently crafted."[16] He has been praised for his depictions of Latino cutlre in his poetry for children.[17]

His poetry for adults is more nuanced and deals with issues involving same-sex relationships, violence and literary references.[14] He is also influenced by Aztec incantations and culture.[18] His lyrical voice is said to move between "affirmation and self-erasure."[14] Snake Poems: An Aztec Invocation and De amor oscuro/Of Dark Love were poems that put him among "the strongest voices in contemporary Chicano poetry."[18] De amor oscuro/Of Dark Love is an especially important collection because it attempts to "end the silence on Chicano male homosexuality."[18]

He has also written some short stories.[3]

Awards

Works

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Bergman, David (February 2003). "Silence Giving Shape". Lambda Book Report 11 (7/8): 34–36. ISSN 1048-9487. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Kathleen Holder (April 14, 2000). "A poet who writes tattoos". Dateline UC Davis.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 "Speaking with Francisco X. Alarcon". Talleres de Poesia. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 "A Binational, Bicultural, Bilingual Poet". Colorin Calorado!. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Francisco X. Alarcón". The Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 10, 2013.
  6. ↑ Herrera, Juan Felipe. "Chicano Gay Poets". Found SF. Shaping San Francisco. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  7. ↑ "Francisco Alarcón: Spanish and Portuguese at UC Davis". University of California, Davis. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
  8. ↑ Cherry, Charles Maurice (1997). "Rev. of Mundo 21". The Modern Language Journal 81 (2): 277–78. doi:10.2307/328818.
  9. ↑ Gebel, Terri A. (2002). "Rev. of Mundo 21". The Modern Language Journal 86 (3): 478–79.
  10. ↑ Jackson, Crista (12 September 2012). "Protest poetry: A call to arms". The State Press. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
  11. ↑ Browning, Sarah (June 2011). "You Are My Mirror". Sojourners. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
  12. ↑ Browning, Sarah (November–December 2011). "The Power of Poetry". Utne Reader (168): 87.
  13. ↑ "University of Notre Dame Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize | Poets & Writers". Pw.org. 2012-01-15. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 Rivera, Juan Pablo (2010). "To Make 'the One' Impossible: Multilingualism and Same-sex Desire in the Poetry of Francisco X. Alarcón". Confluencia 26 (1): 98–111. ISSN 0888-6091. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3 "Poetry Makers - Francisco X. Alarcon". The Miss Rumphius Effect. 3 April 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  16. ↑ "Animal Poems of the Iguazu / Animalario del iguazu". Kirkus Reviews 76 (13): 697. 2008. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  17. ↑ "Meet the Author: Francisco X. Alarcon". Colorin colorado!. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Gonzalez, Marcial (May 1994). "The Poetry of Francisco X. Alarcon: Identifying the Chicano Persona". Bilingual Review 19 (2): 179. Retrieved 1 May 2015.
  19. ↑ "Chicano/Latino Literary Prize - History". hnet.uci.edu. 2006. Retrieved 9 January 2013.

External links