Fetish: Poems

by Orlando Ricardo Menes

Overview

From sensual pleasures and perils, moments and memories of darkness and light, the poems in Orlando Ricardo Menes's new collection sew together stories of dislocation and loss, of survival and hope, of a world patched together by a family over five generations of diaspora. This is Menes's tapestry of the Americas. From Miami to Cuba, Panama to Bolivia and Peru, through the textures, sounds, colors, shapes, and scents of exile and emigration, we find refuge at last in a sense of wholeness and belonging residing in this intensely felt, finely crafted poetry.

Orlando Ricardo Menes is an associate professor of English and Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His poetry collections include, among others, Furia: Poems and Rumba atop the Stones.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496209184
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	07/18/2022
Series:	The Raz/Shumaker Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	825 KB

About the Author

Orlando Ricardo Menes is an associate professor of English and Faculty Fellow of the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His poetry collections include, among others, Furia: Poems and Rumba atop the Stones.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Part 1 Ars Poetica

Courtyard of Clotheslines, Angel Hill 3

Golgotha 5

Fetish 7

Mambo 9

Maracas of Rain 10

Aubade: The Charcoal Makers 11

Zvi Mendel 13

The Maximum Leader Addresses His Island Nation 15

Spiderman in Havana 16

Den of the Lioness 17

Libros 19

Refrigeradores 20

Elegy for Great-Uncle Julio, Cane Cutter 21

Tía Gladys, Backroom Seamstress 23

Zafra 24

Ars Poetica 26

Part 2 El Cristo de Piedra

Windfall Antiques 29

Horses 30

Lalo, Peddler 32

Television, a Patient Teacher 34

Sal 35

Village of the Water People 38

El Cristo de Piedra 41

Birthing Adrian 43

Tantrums 44

Braille 45

Pyx 47

Adderall 48

St. Joseph River 49

Ashes 50

Mole 51

Part 3 The Gringo Called Ñakak

Soroche 55

The Gringo Called Ñakak 57

Altiplano 58

Panegyric for the Condor 60

The Devil's Miner 61

The Boy from Chimbote 62

Parable 63

Our Lord of Miracles 64

Top 66

Toro 67

Breakfast with Capitalists 68

Juancito's Wake 69

Notes for Poems 73

Glossary 75

What People are Saying About This

John Phillip Santos

“Orlando Ricardo Menes’s Fetish is a rare work of the American Creole Sublime, conjuring visions of his Cuban homeland as a sacred geography of vanquished mestizo dreams, his Florida boyhood a world of transmuting tropical wonder. At once mythic, syncretic, and autobiographical, transported on strains of epiphanic geomancy, Menes’s work subtly presents a new vision of América that Martí, Stevens and Walcott would all embrace. You want to whisper in a fever, ‘Adelante!’”—John Phillip Santos, University Distinguished Scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies, University of Texas at San Antonio

 

Maurice Kilwein Guevara

“Open Orlando Ricardo Menes’s exquisite poetry collection Fetish, and you’ll quickly see a folk sculpture of Eleggua, though I should warn you. In the Cuban Santería religion, this deity has 101 manifestations, or roads, he may take you down. In this way, he is not unlike Menes’s poems, which may lead us, in a matter of pages, from suburban Indiana to Miami to Panamá to Kichwa-speaking villages in the Andes. Although the destinies of these roads offer vastly different insights, if we survive them, there is a sensibility that unifies the whole: Menes does not easily identify with grand ideologies and personal arrogance. Rather, he keeps his eye on those who go largely unrecorded by history: a poor great-uncle alienated from his own family by politics, a daughter with severe ADHD, a papá assiduously mending used furniture, a political prisoner who survives cruelty by caring for the earth’s smallest creatures—lame rat, pregnant mouse, chirping cricket.”—Maurice Kilwein Guevara, author of Poema and Postmortem

Charles Harper Webb

“Drenched with the flavor and savor of the Caribbean, Orlando Ricardo Menes’s Fetish is a treat for the mouth and the ear, as well as for the mind. Striking characters abound: Zvi Mendel, ‘retired tobacconist to Havana’s Ashkenazim’; an unnamed female survivor of a prison called ‘Den of the Lioness.’ Anger at injustice often surfaces. The beauty of the region springs up everywhere. But it is sound that powers these poems, a piquant blend of English spiced with Español. . . . These delectable poems beg to be tasted. To be spoken. To be sung.”—Charles Harper Webb, author of Shadow Ball

 

Beth Ann Fennelly

“It is a magic-carpet ride—because the carpet is the tapestry of the Americas and its characters of tobacconists and capitalists and miners and fathers, and the magic is the language, the ‘maracas of rain,’ and the ‘orchids that grow in gessoed moonlight.’ What a wild ride; what a wild and lovely and passionate and closely observed ride.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables

Editorial Reviews

"With flowing language, vivid imagery, and brilliant word choices, Menes can tell a heart-wrenching story in four stanzas."—Mary Christy, Big Muddy

Big Muddy - Mary Christy

"The poems in the collection are powerful, yet engaging narratives crafted by a gifted poet and story-teller."—Mary Alexander, Caribbean Writer

Caribbean Writer - Mary Alexander

"Well versed in the uprooted life of an immigrant, Menes's profound references not only convey local color but also bring the essence of his family history eye level with the reader in these striking verses."—World Literature Today

World Literature Today

“Open Orlando Ricardo Menes’s exquisite poetry collection Fetish, and you’ll quickly see a folk sculpture of Eleggua, though I should warn you. In the Cuban Santería religion, this deity has 101 manifestations, or roads, he may take you down. In this way, he is not unlike Menes’s poems, which may lead us, in a matter of pages, from suburban Indiana to Miami to Panamá to Kichwa-speaking villages in the Andes. Although the destinies of these roads offer vastly different insights, if we survive them, there is a sensibility that unifies the whole: Menes does not easily identify with grand ideologies and personal arrogance. Rather, he keeps his eye on those who go largely unrecorded by history: a poor great-uncle alienated from his own family by politics, a daughter with severe ADHD, a papá assiduously mending used furniture, a political prisoner who survives cruelty by caring for the earth’s smallest creatures—lame rat, pregnant mouse, chirping cricket.”—Maurice Kilwein Guevara, author of Poema and Postmortem

Maurice Kilwein Guevara

“Orlando Ricardo Menes’s Fetish is a rare work of the American Creole Sublime, conjuring visions of his Cuban homeland as a sacred geography of vanquished mestizo dreams, his Florida boyhood a world of transmuting tropical wonder. At once mythic, syncretic, and autobiographical, transported on strains of epiphanic geomancy, Menes’s work subtly presents a new vision of América that Martí, Stevens and Walcott would all embrace. You want to whisper in a fever, ‘Adelante!’”—John Phillip Santos, University Distinguished Scholar in Mestizo Cultural Studies, University of Texas at San Antonio

 

John Phillip Santos

Drenched with the flavor and savor of the Caribbean, Orlando Ricardo Menes’s Fetish is a treat for the mouth and the ear, as well as for the mind. Striking characters abound: Zvi Mendel, ‘retired tobacconist to Havana’s Ashkenazim’; an unnamed female survivor of a prison called ‘Den of the Lioness.’ Anger at injustice often surfaces. The beauty of the region springs up everywhere. But it is sound that powers these poems, a piquant blend of English spiced with Español. . . . These delectable poems beg to be tasted. To be spoken. To be sung.”—Charles Harper Webb, author of Shadow Ball

 

Charles Harper Webb

“It is a magic-carpet ride—because the carpet is the tapestry of the Americas and its characters of tobacconists and capitalists and miners and fathers, and the magic is the language, the ‘maracas of rain,’ and the ‘orchids that grow in gessoed moonlight.’ What a wild ride; what a wild and lovely and passionate and closely observed ride.”—Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Unmentionables

Beth Ann Fennelly