Requiem for the Orchard

These are vivid, visceral poems about coming of age in a place "e;where the Ferris Wheel/ was the tallest thing in the valley,"e; where a boy would learn "e;to fire a shotgun at nine and wring a chicken's neck/ with one hand by twirling the bird and whipping it straight like a towel."e; Looking back, the poet wrestles with the meaning of labor in the apple orchards and "e;the filthy dollars we'd wad into our pockets,"e; or the rites of passage that included sinking a knife into the flank of a dead chestnut horse. In spite of such hardscrabble cruelties-or because of them-there is also a real tenderness in these poems, the revelations of bliss driving along an empty highway "e;like opening a heavy book, / letting the pages feather themselves and finding a dried flower."e; In line after line, poem after poem, there is an immersion in the realm of the senses. The poet has a gift for rendering his world in cinematic images: a ten-gallon hat on his head in the second grade is "e;an upside down chandelier;"e; carnival workers "e;snarl into the darkness on their borrowed Harleys."e; In short, these poems are the stuff of life itself, ugly and beautiful, wherever or whenever we happen to live it. -Martin Espada