Bøger af Esteban Rodriguez

Lyrical insights from an immigrant son navigating love, death, acceptance, and belonging along the United States and Mexico border.   With a narrative voice that translates the unforgettable into something lyrical and magical, The Lost Nostalgias demonstrates Esteban Rodríguez's exploration of familial moments that move between the tragic, the trivial, and the triumphant. A mother's decaying teeth lead to questions of self-care and beauty; a quinceañera becomes a meditation on masculinity; a visit to the bank illuminates a father's existential fears; and a rave suddenly becomes a reflection on migration and survival. Because nothing is off the table under Rodríguez's tender lens, everything and everyone becomes deserving of admiration, dignity, and love.

"A traditional game of chance popular in Mexico and in Mexican American culture, Loterâia is poetically rendered in Esteban Rodrâiguez's eighth collection, with each poem revolving around one of the fifty-four cards. Using the image presented as a catalyst for exploration and self-reflection, Rodrâiguez unveils the familial journey between two countries and cultures through both a surreal and narrative lens. Here, a mother unearths a severed hand in the desert. A father discovers his heart among a heap of discarded items. And at one point, the speaker-toggling between his role as witness and son-finds himself in a canoe on a river contemplating the meaning behind an authentic experience. Lyrical, insightful, and honestly engaging, Loterâia sheds light on a world that doesn't so easily reveal itself, adding to Rodrâiguez's prolific and important oeuvre"--

In Esteban Rodríguez's seventh collection, places both populated and barren become sources of contemplation as much as they do of uncertainty. With a voice that is lyrically bold but narratively focused, Rodriguez's speakers attempt to navigate purgatorial landscapes, cultural labyrinths of the past, and an array of spontaneous scenarios that occupy the always precarious present. Whether on a bus ride in a foreign city, near the scorched edge of an indifferent country, or during a surreal encounter with figures who aren't always what they proclaim to be, Limbolandia traverses the world in hopes of finding not only a new way of survival, but a safe path toward the truth.

Poems from the Heart: Life's Trials and TriumphsBy: Esteban RodriguezEsteban Rodriguez started writing poetry in 2015 as a way to get in touch with his feelings and emotions. He writes poems about different aspects of his life, including happiness, love, failure, depression, overcoming obstacles, and many more. He decided in 2021 to compile his works into a book as a way to inspire others to overcome their issues and find some meaning in life.About the AuthorEsteban Rodriguez was born in 1972 to a Puerto Rican family, in Gary, Indiana. The youngest of five children, he was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school from kindergarten through college. He was married in 1996 and is the father of four children. After his divorce in 2014, he started to attend therapy where it was suggested he start writing to get back in touch with feelings. After spending five years writing journal entries and poetry, he decided to publish a collection of his works.

In this collection of poems, "Rodriguez explores the hazardous journeys across borders and landscapes many are forced to undertake when violence, destruction, and the constant fear of death are subjected upon a land and people"--Publisher marketing.

Estaban Rodriguez's In Bloom is an exquisite array of lyrical poetry. The title poem takes us through a catalogue of images, beautifully phrased, of family members who 'lent themselves to a pendulum of trumpets, / accordians, drums, guitars, and lyrics that taught us' Spanish and solitariness, the disenchantment.

Through lyric and narrative poems alike, the speaker of the poems in Crash Course attempts to understand the manner in which cultural traditions and expectations shape their understanding of the world. Watching a father patch up a truck ponders the effect of language across generations. A simple knock on the door provides a meditation on the immigrant experience, and the anxiety surrounding what it means to arrive with nothing in a different country. Other poems look at the complexity of familial relationships, dissecting specific moments that although appear mundane on the surface (shopping for items to put on layaway, barbecues, watching a cousin feed his pet snake), are - once fleshed out on the page - profound episodes that enlighten a labyrinth of memories.