If Today Were Tomorrow

If Today Were Tomorrow
Author :
Publisher : Milkweed Editions
Total Pages : 303
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781571317865
ISBN-13 : 1571317864
Rating : 4/5 (65 Downloads)

Book Synopsis If Today Were Tomorrow by : Humberto Ak'abal

Download or read book If Today Were Tomorrow written by Humberto Ak'abal and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterful collection of poems rooted in K’iche’ Maya culture illustrating all the ways meaning manifests within our world, and how best to behold it. “My language was born among trees, / it holds the taste of earth; / my ancestors’ tongue is my home.” So writes Humberto Ak’abal, a K’iche’ Maya poet born in Momostenango, in the western highlands of Guatemala. A legacy of land and language courses through the pages of this spirited collection, offering an expansive take on this internationally renowned poet’s work. Written originally in the Indigenous K’iche’ language and translated from the Spanish by acclaimed poet Michael Bazzett, these poems blossom from the landscape that raised Ak’abal—mountains covered in cloud forest, deep ravines, terraced fields of maize. His unpretentious verse models a contraconquista—counter-conquest—perspective, one that resists the impulse to impose meaning on the world and encourages us to receive it instead. “In church,” he writes, “the only prayer you hear / comes from the trees / they turned into pews.” Every living thing has its song, these poems suggest. We need only listen for it. Attuned, uncompromising, Ak’abal teaches readers to recognize grace in every earthly observation—in the wind, carrying a forgotten name. In the roots, whose floral messengers “tell us / what earth is like / on the inside.” Even in the birds, who “sing in mid-flight / and shit while flying.” At turns playful and pointed, this prescient entry in the Seedbank series is a transcendent celebration of both K’iche’ indigeneity and Ak’abal’s lifetime of work.


If Today Were Tomorrow Related Books

If Today Were Tomorrow
Language: en
Pages: 303
Authors: Humberto Ak'abal
Categories: Poetry
Type: BOOK - Published: 2024-06-25 - Publisher: Milkweed Editions

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A masterful collection of poems rooted in K’iche’ Maya culture illustrating all the ways meaning manifests within our world, and how best to behold it. “M
Today Is Tomorrow
Language: en
Pages: 114
Authors: M. Scott Norton
Categories: Education
Type: BOOK - Published: 2019-11-18 - Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book focuses on today’s education relative to its effectiveness for preparing students for the future. The matter of purposes for education today remains
The Death of the Novel and Other Stories
Language: en
Pages: 188
Authors: Ronald Sukenick
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003 - Publisher: University of Alabama Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Originally published in 1969, The Death of the Novel and Other Stories remains among the most memorable creations of an unforgettable age. Irrepressibly experim
Today Is Tomorrow
Language: en
Pages: 320
Authors: Caroline Kurtz
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2022-04-05 - Publisher: Catalyst Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Caroline and her husband begin working with civil war refugees in South Sudan and Kenya, they'll discover the deep complexities of American interference ab
Practice book
Language: en
Pages: 130
Authors: Michael Swan
Categories: English language
Type: BOOK - Published: 1990 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK