Tiempos Lejanos: Poetic Images from the Past

Nasario Garcia

For Nasario García, poetry comprises his personal images of the past. The poems in this book, presented in Spanish and English, take us back to the village of Ojo del Padre, now called Guadalupe, New Mexico, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when such villages were about to leap from the preindustrial era into a postindustrial world. García grew up in Ojo del Padre and ably captures the landscape, the village and its people, the birds and animals, both domestic and wild, just before they are extinguished forever.

These poems are deceptively simple. While maintaining the viewpoint of a child, García employs sophisticated rhymes and techniques and suffuses the poems with a rich humor. His work links ancient Spanish literary forms with the vernacular language of the village to produce a profoundly authentic New Mexican rural Spanish.

Because these are poems about everyday things, they have a universal appeal. Simple items--a coffee pot, a teakettle--come lyrically to life like a child's wind-up toy.

REMOTE TIMES

Remote times
embedded in the past
remain well guarded
in a precarious
quoin
of my memory
yearning
to escape
so as to enjoy
the freedom
and well being
of my desert
where today
every thing is silent.

TIEMPOS LEJANOS

Tiempos lejanos
quedan reguardados

en un rincón
traicionero de
mi memoria
que se desesperan
por escaparse
para gozar de
la libertad y
del bien estar
de mi desierto
donde hoy día
Todo está muerto.

--from Tiempos Lejanos

"Although the poems are offered to us as "snapshots," taken as a whole they re-create a locale and a culture that offer the reader not familiar with this world a tantalizing feeling of a real sense of place and home. . . This poetry is remarkable for its musicality in Spanish and its vivid imagery."--Multicultural Review

"If good poetry is the distilled wine of writing, then this slim, beautiful volume of poems by Nasario García is a rare, vintage brandy. . . . It's a short read, but you will return to it again and again, to savor its bittersweet flavors."--The Daily Times, Farmington, New Mexico

"In short lines, the poems gracefully flow down the page. Within their gentle confines one finds nostalgia as well as whimsy and humor. . . . With quick brushstrokes of his pen García creates small canvases with his clear and uncluttered language."--Southwest BookViews

"Nasario García has written a collection of bilingual poems that look at the ordinary and every day, set in the world of the village of Ojo del Padre in the late 1940s and early 1950s. . . . where the poet grew up. These poems are a kind of autobiography of listening. . . . this brings a freshness to the page as if these voices had just been overheard."--New Mexico Magazine

Master folklorist and native New Mexican Nasario García has published numerous books dealing with Hispanic folklore and the oral history of northern New Mexico and for three decades has dedicated his time to the preservation of Hispanic culture and language of the region whose primary roots rest in Spain and Mexico. He currently lives in Santa Fe.

Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry series

5.5 x 8.5 200 pages 1 halftone