The excellent Mexican poet and talented
graphic designer, Roberto Mendoza Ayala, became a part-time New Yorker in 2012
while he continued to publish his poetry in books and magazines in Mexico and
throughout the Spanish-speaking world. In 2013 he joined local salon gatherings
in order to meet local poets here in Manhattan and share his poetry. He
remained intimately connected to the Mexico City poetry community (he goes back
and forth on business trips at least once a month) and eventually he imagined a
way to connect the two groups of poets.
After getting to know those he read
with here, Roberto imagined an anthology that would combine the works of poets
of the two great cities. He and a small handful of collaborators on both sides
of the border gathered the works of twenty-five Mexican and North American
poets for the collection entitled “De Neza York a New York”, or “From Neza York
to New York” which was published in Mexico City and distributed there and here
in May, 2015.
The title speaks for itself. But
for those confused by the Neza York reference, the name is that of a colonia, or vast neighborhood, in the
sprawling valley that is the Federal District of Mexico City. With close to a
million inhabitants (the actual name of the area being Nezahaulcóyotl, after a
fifteenth-century Aztec emperor) the area became known to inhabitants as “Neza
York”. Mexico City’s airport is there, and because so many businessmen live in
or around Nezahaulcóyotl for its close proximity—those who fly back and forth
to North America’s most famous city—it took on the whimsical name.
Twenty-five poets—twelve from the
States and thirteen from Mexico—each contributed three poems. These were then
cross-translated into the two languages, so that the 144-page anthology
consists of 150 poems. The Mexican poets are: Roberto Mendoza Ayala, Félix
Cardoso, Raúl Casamadrid, Leopoldo González, María Ángeles Juárez Téllez,
Victor M. Navarro, Alejandro Reyes Juárez, Iliana Rodríguez, Rolando Rosas
Galicia, Arturo Trejo Villafuerte, Aura María Vidales, Guadalupe Vidales and
Eduardo Villegas Guevara. From New York City—Mary Askin-Jencsik, Lord Bison,
Stephen Bluestone, Hannah Cerasoli, Claire Fitzpatrick, Arthur Gatti, Gordon
Gilbert, Robert Givens, Evie Ivy, Rosalind Resnick, Griselda Steiner and Jack
Tricarico.
Selected below are excerpts from
the anthology:
From Jack Tricarico’s “Wishful
Thinking”—
…Does
the painting seem like a stain
About
to bleed out
Into
some kind of semblance
Of
something that wants to exist
And
can’t find its way into space?...
Roberto Mendoza Ayala’s (entire)
“There’ll Never Be Another You”
Of
all the fruits possible
you
make your nest in my hand
shaped
by your sumptuous style.
You
are fragrance at the end of a stem
and
your flesh slowly yields
in
the sugary snake
that
bites my tongue.
Having
chosen you,
I
have left a basket full
of
broken promises
Because of current
political tensions surrounding Mexican immigrants, an artistic collaboration
such as this one couldn’t have come at a better time. Perhaps it’s partially for
this reason that the cultural arm of the Mexican government has chosen to
launch a special celebration of the publication in late November at Mexico
City’s splendiferous Palace of Fine Arts.
