Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    This River Here: Poems of San Antonio
    This River Here: Poems of San Antonio
    This River Here: Poems of San Antonio
    Ebook116 pages44 minutes

    This River Here: Poems of San Antonio

    By Carmen Tafolla

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    San Antonio poet laureate Carmen Tafolla captures her hometown—the city of her ancestors for the past three centuries—in poems that celebrate its history as a cosmopolitan multilingual cultural crossroads. Discover San Antonio’s corazón in Tafolla’s poetry, accompanied by historic and contemporary photographs that convey its enduring sense of place. A century ago, San Antonio gave Oscar Wilde “a thrill of strange pleasure.” J. Frank Dobie claimed that “every Texan has two hometowns—his own and San Antonio,” and Will Rogers declared it to be “one of the three unique cities of America.” To Larry McMurtry, “San Antonio has kept an ambiance that all the rest of our cities lack.” Carmen Tafolla calls forth the soul of this place—the holy home of the waters, called Yanaguana by los indios—and celebrates the many cultures that have made of it “un rebozo bordado de culturas y colores.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWings Press
    Release dateJul 1, 2014
    ISBN9781609404000
    This River Here: Poems of San Antonio
    Author

    Carmen Tafolla

     Carmen Tafolla is a poet, speaker, professor emeritus, State Poet Laureate of Texas, and author of more than thirty books, including Fiesta Babies, What Can You Do with a Paleta?, and What Can You Do with a Rebozo? (all available from Random House). Tafolla has received many awards, including the Americas Award, five International Latino Book Awards, and the Charlotte Zolotow Award. She travels to many places across the world, but always comes back to San Antonio, to a home filled with books and surrounded by trees, butterflies, and raccoons. Visit her website at carmentafolla.net.

    Read more from Carmen Tafolla

    Related to This River Here

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Puckety Chute

      Mar 1, 2018

      Puckety Chute
      17 min read

    • Article

      How I Finally Learned That Trauma Does Not Define Me

      Jan 24, 2020

      “It can be exhausting to tell and retell your painful story just to get people to listen to you about other things.”

      3 min read

    • Article

      Stories Bad and Good: Understanding Appalachia Through Reading

      Sep 5, 2018

      Asher looked up at all those stars again. It wasn’t right for such a sky to be shining above them when so many people had lost so much. But the sky doesn’t pay a bit of attention to the things that happen to us, the joys or the sorrows, either one.”

      12 min read

    • Article

      Southern Secrets

      Jun 3, 2019

      Southern Secrets
      5 min read

    • Article

      Helen Oyeyemi Wants to Bewitch You

      Mar 29, 2019

      With every project, I want it to be something fun to do, but also very difficult. The more books I write, the more interested I am in the process. The sense of exhilaration as I write. The post Helen Oyeyemi Wants to Bewitch You appeared first on The

      6 min read

    • Article

      HEART & SOUL

      Sep 6, 2023

      HEART & SOUL
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Whole Fucking Paradigm

      Nov 25, 2019

      The Whole Fucking Paradigm
      8 min read

    • Article

      Give Voice To A Golden Age

      Mar 3, 2021

      Imagine a grand English manor house in the halcyon sporting days of the 1900s on a misty autumn morning — the bright scarlet coats of hunt staff jarring to sleepy eyes beneath heavy clouds. Impatient horses are being saddled, and hounds are scurrying

      5 min read

    • Article

      Paint The Town

      Sep 8, 2019

      Paint The Town
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dignity and Decorum (1996)

      Jun 1, 2022

      Dignity and Decorum (1996)
      3 min read

    • Article

      Books With The Most Impact

      Mar 15, 2023

      Books With The Most Impact
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Herd word

      Jan 7, 2020

      The Herd word
      17 min read

    • Article

      Books With The Most Impact

      Mar 15, 2022

      Books With The Most Impact
      8 min read

    • Article

      “Singing In The Outhouse”

      Mar 1, 2024

      I dreamed I heard somebodySinging in the outhouse—Frank Stanford, “The Singing Knives” Growing up in the Virginia woods we deprecatingly referred to as “the sticks,” one of my friends had a genuine outhouse in their backyard. Their old farmhouse had

      15 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for This River Here

    5/5

    2 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This River Here: Poems of San Antonio, Carmen TafollaWings Press978-1-60940-399-7$16.95, 92 pgsWell. I am stunned. If you've never been to San Antonio then please come on down. But if you can't pay a visit then you should definitely pick up a copy of This River Here: Poems of San Antonio by San Antonio's first Poet Laureate Carmen Tafolla. The hot, drowsy afternoons; the cool green river; the melody of Tex-Mex in your ears; the savory fire of Tex-Mex on your tongue; the magic of the curanderos in the very air. It's all here, in this book, this herencia, including an offering of photographs to get lost in. We are rich here in this old river city, busily blurring the lines.My favorites (I had a wonderfully terrible time trying to choose only two):"Fragile Flames"Altares viejos of my path-warmed houseolder than our prayerslight as sacred sunraysrich as scarred and ancient woodyour votive one-day candles lastwell beyond twilight, stubborn miracleson this inherited dark wool sarapewith stained and balding fringestill tipping stripes of life'smost painful, hopeful colorstiny lights make loans of faithto midnight's darkest stormsMy peoplelean on a chancelive on a hopepray in a fragile flickerof stolen candlelightHoly places around us everywheretiny hallway tables with a handtorn branchof esperanza-yellow bloom and seedsdressertops with tin milagro wingsbackyard carefully historied pile of stoneseach one a prayer a bead of sweatprotecting red-dressed, star-cloaked Virgina now-unsainted Christophernervous on the dashboardwith the cross flying above him,the doilied corner shelf with picturesof those lost six months or sixty years agostill with usThese resilient rocks of lifepath prayerswet-mortared of the past and presentalways bow to possible milagros living in the futureTheir flowers - living, dead, or artificial - faithfultestifying silently to our beliefthat fragile flamessoft-speak the powerof things too realtoo strong too deepto be simplyseen"San Anto's Mezcla Mágica"What it means to co-exist,to bloom together,is that the lines grow fuzzy,optical illusions with two different facesappearing at different timesthere is not a street that marksa neighborhood others have notcrossed intoeaten, loved, lived in, tasted in a different wayEven in Alamo Heights,tamales end up on the "Old Texas" families'Thanksgiving tables, while "Graciela's" sellsdesigner suits in sarape colorsEven on Nogalitos Streetthe Chinese tamarind seed is the top-selling snackat the Mexican food counter,Indian curry gets scooped upin comal-warmed pita breadVietnamese eggrolls brim out oftoasty tortillas made fromGerman-milled white flourAt the corner of French and Fredericksburg RoadMartínez Barbacoa pairs steaming barbacoawith ice-cold, carbonated Big Red,imports El Milagro tortillas from Austinand Virgin of Guadalupe wooden bracelets from Mexico,stacks avocados just lusciously ripe enoughbut not too soft, in front of the lusciously Olympian Aztecsposed on a calendar that only distantly layersechoed rhythms of the Aztec CalendarAfter barbacoa and corn tortillas for breakfastwe want "something different" for lunchand pair black-smoked Jamaican Jerk Bar-B-Qwith chile-roasted cornSo nighttime at Sam's Burger Joint we are not surprisedwhen in the Music Hall out backa tall, blonde Chicana named Patricia Vonne(née Rodriguez and freshly back from concert tour of Europe)rattles the cage of the stage andsings a blend smooth as honeyto the harmony of a rock electric guitarcountry fiddleand Spanish castanetsCarmen Tafolla is the author of more than 20 books. She has received numerous awards, among them the Art of Peace Award; the Charlotte Zolotow Award; the Americas Award, presented at the Library of Congress; two ALA Notable Books; and two international Latino Book Awards. She is currently Writer-in-Residence for Children's, Youth & Transformative Literature at the University of Texas/San Antonio. In 2012, Ms. Tafolla was named the first Poet Laureate of the City of San Antonio.

    Book preview

    This River Here - Carmen Tafolla

    1846.

    I.

    Listen to the voices in this breeze, your ancestors, the trees the river that remembers …

    This River Here

    This river here

    is full of me and mine.

    This river here

    is full of you and yours.

    Right here

    (or maybe a little farther down)

    my great-grandmother washed the dirt

    out of her family’s clothes,

    soaking them, scrubbing them,

    bringing them up

    clean.

    Right here

    (or maybe a little farther down)

    Washing clothes on San Pedro Creek, ca. 1900. Photographer unknown.

    Reverend M.F. Tafolla, baptising parishioners in the river, c. 1933.

    my grampa washed the sins

    out of his congregation’s souls,

    baptizing them, scrubbing them,

    bringing them up

    clean.

    Right here

    (or maybe a little farther down)

    my great-great grandma froze with fear

    as she glimpsed,

    between the lean, dark trees,

    a lean, dark Indian peering at her.

    She ran home screaming, "¡Ay, los Indios!

    Aí vienen los I-i-indios!!"

    as he threw pebbles at her,

    laughing.

    Till one day she got mad

    and stayed

    and threw pebbles

    right back at him!

    After they got married,

    they built their house right here

    (or maybe a little farther down.)

    Right here,

    my father gathered

    mesquite beans and wild berries

    working with a passion

    during the Depression.

    His eager sweat poured off

    and mixed so easily

    with the water of this river here.

    Right here,

    my mother cried in silence,

    so far from her home,

    sitting with her one brown suitcase,

    a traveled trunk packed full with blessings,

    and rolling tears of loneliness and longing

    which mixed (again so easily)

    with the currents of this river here.

    Right here we’d pour out picnics,

    and childhood’s blood from dirty scrapes on dirty knees,

    and every generation’s first-hand stories

    of the weeping lady La Llorona

    haunting the river every night,

    crying Ayyy, mis hi-i-i-ijos! —

    (It happened right here!)

    The fear dripped off our skin

    and the blood dripped off our scrapes

    and they mixed with the river water,

    right here.

    Right here,

    the stories and the stillness

    of those gone before us

    haunt us still,

    now grown, our scrapes in different places,

    the voices of those now dead

    quieter,

    but not too far away …

    Right here we were married,

    you and I,

    and the music filled the air,

    danced in,

    dipped in,

    mixed in

    with the river water

    … dirt and sins,

    fear and anger,

    sweat and tears,

    love and music,

    blood.

    And memories …

    It was right here!

    And right here we stand,

    washing clean our memories,

    baptizing our hearts,

    gathering past and present,

    dancing to the flow

    we find

    right here

    or maybe —

    a little

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1