writing | ZETEO

The New Amerikan Thing

September 1, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Juan Felipe Herrera’s story is a nice one. Born in California in 1948, he grew up picking crops with his migrant worker parents in the San Joaquin and Salinas Valleys. After graduating from San Diego High School, Herrera went on to complete degrees at UCLA, Stanford and the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has published over fourteen collections of poetry, children’s books, young adult novels and served as California’s Poet Laureate in 2012. His work is a key part […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, chicano, literature, mexico, poetry, writing

Jane Jacobs: Intuition vs. Evidence

August 31, 2015 by fritztucker

After having read countless authors who cite Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and having intuitively come to many Jane Jacobs-esque conclusions on my own over the years, I finally decided it was time to read the original work. Many of the conclusions Jacobs comes to resonate with my personal experience. Critiquing the notion that parks are safer for children than streets, Jacobs writes: “what significant change does occur if children are transferred from a lively city street to […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: books, childhood, children, civil rights, History, literature, New York City, social justice, women, writing

Early Mid-Life Crisis

August 18, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

There is an undocumented age crisis that occurs in the early thirties. Indeed, the onset of this decade might mark the actual “coming of age.” Eighteen is still shrouded by the incredulous, protective shield of childhood, as is any age before twenty nine. But thirty-three is different. It is lucid and stunned and dismayed at the same time. I held this notion as an inkling until reading the poem below by German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger, which confirmed it as […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: aging, literature, poetry, reading, writing

Fortune’s Cookies

August 4, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

A friend recently sent me an upbeat, effortless Lawrence Ferlinghetti (b. 1919) poem that I immediately liked. And then immediately didn’t know if I liked. The poem is from Ferlinghetti’s record-breaking “A Coney Island State of Mind,” which was published in 1955 and sold over a million copies in nine different languages. The poet’s life story is worth reading. He is an orphan, veteran, journalist, world traveller, publisher (he was the first to publish “Howl“), painter, political activist and still-active ninety-something-year-old. Except for a few poems, […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, Ferlinghetti, poetry, reading, writing

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Better than a Great Song

July 21, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Several years ago, British poet John Fuller wrote a poem with a bright future as a chart-topping pop song. Perhaps its catchy flow is due to the fact that it’s a strict villanelle, or perhaps it’s due to the fact that the poem is about unrequited, but not tortured, love. There’s just enough heartache to make it interesting, but no one is suffering too badly. Fuller is known for mastering traditional form and making it palatable. The villanelle for example can […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, John Fuller, literature, poetry, reading, writing

Abandoned Men

July 14, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Brooklyn Copeland is a young, prolific poet who has published individual poems in venues like Poetry Magazine and The New York Times. She also has several chapbooks and full length poetry collections available. As readily available as her work is online to peruse, I found it hard to pin down. “Self-conscious” is definitely a word that came to mind. “Intentional” is another. But, then I also wanted to say “evocative” and “effective.” I considered “skilled” but then read a few […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, poetry, reading, writing

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Flirtation

June 23, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Rita Dove was named Poet Laureate of the United States in 1993 when she was just forty years old. By then, though, she had written a few novels and several collections of poetry, including Thomas and Beulah (1986), which won the Pulitzer Prize. The poem below is not an example of how Dove confronts complex historical issues in her work, brings them home and makes them personal. Rather, it is a light piece, a flirtation. But, it’s summer now, officially, and […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, love, poetry, reading, writing

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Stay Inside

June 9, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

The other day, I read a poem whose beginning I didn’t quite like. But, it was weird enough to keep me hooked to its very last line, which made me laugh out loud and reread the poem several times, appreciating it more and more with each go. The piece is by poet Paul Violi, who published eleven collections of poetry during his lifetime and continues to be published after his death. Violi received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, nearly every […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: humor, literature, poetry, reading, writing

At Every Wedding

May 26, 2015 by Ana Maria Caballero

Not many young adult authors launch their novels with a poem, much less a two-page piece that transcends their target demographic. So I was surprised to find the poem below on the very first page of bestselling YA author Sarah Dessen‘s novel “That Summer.” The poem is by South Carolina author Dannye Romine Powell, an award-winning poet, writer and long-time book editor at the “Charlotte Observer,” who counts a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship among her accolades. More of her beautifully crafted pieces […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, Archives, ZiR • Tags: books, literature, love, poetry, reading, writing