próspero saíz

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the bird of nothing & other poems


Saíz' first full-length poetry collection gathers short and long poems, fragments, epigrams. the bird of nothing & other poems presents an absolutely unique poetry of stunning power and complexity. The collection includes the 100-page poem "the bird of nothing," where saíz takes up the caesura, silence, death & eros, earth & sky, and the night; "the book of pronouns," (five haunting, introspective poems on life-death); and the classic "malinche." Other lyrics, fragments, aphorisms and prose poems testify to the poet's rich and complex Southwestern heritage.


  1. ". . . the great eclipse is the 'ECLIPSE OF THE SUN'. . . obliquely denouncing the erasure (by deadly writing) of a whole native American culture, which the poem feels so movingly powerless to reinscribe. . . the epic of American consciousness made problematical. . . . Like Leaves of Grass and its 'America,' 'The Bird of Nothing' encompasses much more than itself. But while the ambition of Whitman's poem was to translate a whole nation into the whole world, saíz' exacting poem is an American poem that chooses to have no nation, or borders of any kind, for that matter. . . . An exquisitely fragmentary meditation that self-reflectively breaks in upon the ordered course of human life as it has been conceived of and written down in the western tradition."

  2. - Maria Irene Ramalho de Sousa Santos, Prof. of American Literature, Coimbra U., Portugal


  4. ". . .this beautifully produced book is an accessible hymnal to nature. . . All students of Hispanic American literature and American Southwestern poetry must order it."

  5. - Glenna Luschei, Café Solo


  7. "At the heart of Aztec theology there is a fundamental sense of emptiness/non-being, and that is what the bird of nothing is all about: "all is close but nothing arrives. . . lost in the night. . . the last night open to the light / something is uttered there / under the fatal blow of the day / the impossible night is nearing.' "

  8. - Hugh Fox, The Glass Cherry


Illustrated; sewn & wrapped in Teton Clay paper cover; 7" X 10"; 168 pages

ISBN: 0-941160-11-4 (regular edition)

ISBN: 0-941160-16-5 (limited edition of 50 signed & numbered by the poet)