Da de los Muertos

(Paperback)

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Dia de los Muertos is the lynchpin poem of Snake #3: Hunger Sutras, the third installment in Lemons's Snake Quartet, being published as its own chapbook/adult coloring book. The poem is based on Lemons's real, lived experience with a Dia de los Muertos celebration in Oaxaca, Mexico; and though history truly comes alive, there is a sense that the authenticity of such a celebration is a thing of the past. Like the bones of a giant beast dug out of a tar pit then reassembled, it must poorly represent the living creature. Dia de los Muertos intends to illuminate the dark things that scuttle out of graves carrying pieces of the newly buried back to the world to reanimate with new potential.

Author Bio

Gary Lemons studied for two years with Donald Justice, Norman Dubie and Marvin Bell in the Undergraduate Poetry Workshop at Iowa City from 19711973. He has published three books of poetrythe last of whichSnake (Red Hen Press 2012) is the first book of the Snake Quartet. For decades he fished Alaska, built grain elevators, worked high steel and re-forested the clear cuts of the Pacific Northwest. Currently he and his wife, the artist Nle Giulini, teach yoga from their studio, Tenderpaws.