Sign-In
Cart
Incantations: Songs, Spells and Images by Mayan Women
Paperback
Poetry AnthologiesGeneral Poetry
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9781933693095
Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press
Published: Jun 1 2009
Pages: 230
Weight: 1.30
Height: 0.70 Width: 8.30 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
This book of poems and stark, vivid illustrations is rooted in the female soul of indigenous Mexico. The Tzotzil women of the Chiapas Highlands are the poets and the artists. Ambar Past, who collected the poems and drawings, includes a moving essay about their poetics, beliefs, and history.
In the 1970s, living among the Maya, Past watched the people endure as an epidemic swept through a village. No help came. Many children died. One mother offered her dead child a last sip of Coca-Cola and uttered a prayer:
Take this sweet dew from the earth, take this honey. It will help you on your way. It will give you strength on your path.
Incantations like this--poems about birth, love, hate, sex, despair, and death--coupled with primitive illustrations, provide a compelling insight into the psychology of these Mayan women poets. The Cinco Puntos edition of Incantations is a facsimile of the original handmade edition produced by the Taller Leñateros. It was reviewed in The New York Times.
At the age of twenty-three, Ambar Past left the United States for Mexico. She lived among the Mayan people, teaching the techniques of native dyes and learning to speak Tzotzil. She is the creator of the graphic arts collective Taller Leñateros in Chiapas and was a founding member of Sna Jolobil, a weaving cooperative for Mayan artisans.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Alighieri, Dante
Pitavy, Francois
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover