Adobe Odes

Pat Mora

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780816526109, 9780816526093
• eBook ISBN: 9780816549016
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Wine-sipping syllables, a communion of bones, impetuous pinches of chile, and parrot-sassy guacamole. With a mélange of aromas and tastes, colors and sounds, award-winning poet Pat Mora invites readers into her home in this new collection of forty-nine odes. Inspired by Pablo Neruda's Odas Elemantales and reinvented with a Latina identity, Mora celebrates the ordinary in lyrics that are anything but. Her poetry is the poetry of space—house patterns and adobe constructions—and the human rhythms that happen inside. It is also the poetry of what she loves—chocolate, books, dandelions, church bells, hope, courage, and even rain. Thick with the microcultures of foodstuffs, family, places, regions, deities, spirits, and literary figures, Mora's adobe universe is luscious and tactile, elemental and dynamic.

From family gossip and beauty secrets, to women darning hand-me-downs, to reluctant hands carrying bodies across borders, Mora traverses the tangled threads of culture, community, family, gender, and injustice. Her vivid observations together with her deft handling of symmetry and meter make her poetry uniquely insightful, subtle, and elegant. Sprinkled with Spanish and plenty of spice, each ode is a sensory flurry of mind and body. Together they make a cauldron of flavorful, simmering language. They are meant to be savored as they slowly stir the soul.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Ode to Adobe
• Ode to Guacamole
• Ode to Readers
• Ode to Kitchens
• Ode to Chiles
• Ode to Chocolate
• Ode to Arroz con Leche
• Ode to Spirits
• Ode to Names
• Ode to a Book
• Ode to Pablo Neruda
• Ode to a Friend
• Ode to a Cricket
• Ode to a Child
• Ode to Toes
• Ode to Dandelions
• Ode to a Sprite
• Ode to a Bumblebee
• Ode to a Jardín Mexicano
• Ode to Sor Juana
• Ode to Words
• Ode to Our Lady of Guadalupe
• Ode to an Apple
• Ode to a Church Bell
• Ode to Jesus Laughing
• Ode to a Cottonwood
• Ode to Desire
• Ode to Play
• Ode to Hope
• Ode to Courage
• Ode to Ancianas
• Ode to El Paso
• Ode to Workers
• Ode to Rain
• Ode to a Desert Willow
• Ode to Sunflowers
• Ode to Santa Fe
• Ode to St. Francis of Assisi
• Ode to Miracles
• Ode to Another Chance
• Ode to Skin
• Ode to Women
• Ode to Tulips
• Ode to Lemons
• Ode to Tea
• Ode to a Pond
• Ode to Clouds
• Ode to the Earth
• Ode to a Kiva Fireplace
• Acknowledgments