Longview Road

These autobiographical poems express hard-won wisdom and equilibrium. Monolin Manny Moreno offers a clear-eyed rootedness in place and family, love of and respect for Indigenous community and ceremony, the courage to examine dishonest and self-destructive choices, the compassion for those who are consumed by self-hatred, and the power of prayer, and the pain of forgiving. Moreno is not just a Central Valley poet, however, but also an accomplished photographer and painter, so first the reader lingers on the exquisite cover: a Moreno photograph of his niece looking out the door of a country shack in which his family spent years after the untimely death of his father. The shack, "e;we affectionately knew as home.... stands a sapped up elder/ready to cross over/a hollowed bone"e; ("e;Starting Out from Longview Road"e;). In this world, grandfathers plant willows and fruit trees, help build families a house, give boys the first tomato of the season and discourage them from sampling a habanero. They banish false identities with gentle but persistent truth-telling as when Grandpa Manuel tells the boy buckaroo who'd rather be on the side of the cowboys, "e;Tu eres indio, Yaqui/Tarascan/Never forget/Never be ashamed"e; ("e;Except for Tonto"e;). Moreno's family is also ravaged by alcoholism, as Moreno gets his first sip of wine when he is just nine ("e;Story of the Sips"e;). The elders of Native communities who break his self-destructive cycle and confirm his Indigenous identity, connecting him to his legacy of Indigenous heritage.