Rise, Do Not Be Afraid

image: rise, do not be afraid

"It was the last good year for Santa Rita, a town that once thrived in the shadow of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. But the communidad's fragile bonds of honor, obligation, and love unravel when "the devil comes like bad water through the oldest and weakest parts of a place." Embedded in the novel's winding tales, memory and dream mingle and sing, asking us to question our preconceptions about history-whose version becomes truth? Faced with outsider infiltration and greed, Santa Rita's faith rests in the hands of her people, both the living and the dead."

 

Aaron Abeyta: " Today, Santa Rita exists mostly in memory, the only road in blocked by an iron gate and a no trespassing sign.  This book is for the people of Santa Rita.  It is also for the people of every village and every town that knows the sensation of loss, but also of beauty and perseverance. For her beauty and perseverance I am, forever, indebted to my beautiful and powerful wife, Michele.  She is, and will always be, the personification of the powerful will that exists among our people."

Review: High Country News, Annie Dawid:

Fiction
0-9789456-8-9
$15.95 Ghost Road Press

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Books will ship 4/1/07

 

as orion falls

x American Book Award winning poet aaron a. abeyta finds beauty in the unexpected, whether it’s the melody of a raindrop striking a tin can or the complicated and intensely personal definitions of poetry itself.

as orion falls, a spectacular and intricate narrative array of poems, exposes and magnifies the constellations of everyday life—with its memory, pain, and joy. Weaving nostalgia, mythology, and wrenching passion, abeyta crafts language with exceptional care, and his achievement is a collection that speaks the truths we know from our own experience.

An accessible entry into a self-contained world of the purest loves imaginable, as orion falls is a feast that feeds our secret dreams.

 

"There is no other voice that conjures the sky and keeps count of stars as human migrations, moving, fading, and bursting anew as aaron abeyta’s. Here he is standing naked and alone on the abandoned snow drifts and tierras, holding them as fallen angels and stellar evidence of our birthright — the luminous lands we claimed we would honor thirty-five years ago. Abeyta speaks with the voices of Nazim Hikmet, Jim Sagel, Allison Hedge-Coke and Albert Hunter, all lovers of the small earth and its collosal heart." —Juan Felipe Herrera author of Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box

 

colcha

In colcha, aaron abeyta blends the contrasting rhythms of the English and Spanish languages, finding music in a simple yet memorable lyricism without losing the complexity and mystery of personal experience. His forty-two poems take the reader on a journey through a contemplative personal history that explores communal, political and societal issues as well as the individual experiences of family and friends. With his distinctive voice, abeyta invites people of all cultures to enter his poems by exploring the essence of humanity as expressed by his particular Hispanic culture and heritage.

Marked by intimacy and deep sentiment, colcha not only acquaints us with the land of abeyta’s people, but also reveals the individuals from his life and family history in the most colorful and delicate detail. We meet his abuelitos (grandparents) in poems such as "colcha" and "3515 Wyandot," and hear of their connection to the tierra and its seasons, their labor and its bounty presented both viscerally and lovingly. We also meet the nameless people: the rancheros and the herders and the farmers, the locals in their pick-up trucks, and the women who make the tortillas. abeyta’s reflections on the plight, loves, joys, failures, and exploitation of the common person in such poems as "cuando se secan las acequias," "untitled (verde)," and "cinco de mayo" belong to the literary heritage of such poets as Pablo Neruda, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Walt Whitman.

colcha is not just for those who love poetry, but for all people who wish to be moved by the music of language and, while listening, perhaps to gain some personal insight into their own lives and cultural traditions.