"When you surrender you stretch out like the world."
--Neruda
"We are grasped by what we cannot grasp."
--Rilke
Hauntingly romantic, Estaban R. Arellano, Jr.'s writes poems of love, romance, sadness, and loneliness that will immediately work their way into your heart. With lines like "a lilting moon / dissolving in God's mouth," he shows an absolute mastery of language and imagery. His beautiful words take us directly to the relevant subject of his poems.
Esteban provided us with a questionnaire-style bio:
Poets I love: VallejoNerudaLorcaBorgesMachadoJimenezWhitmanPazRumiKabirFaiz HafizAnwarSnyderAkhmatovaBrodskyRilkeetc.
Influences on my writing: my father, a Baptist minister who brought Christ, religion and poetry into my life and never tired of writing love poems to Mom; my mother, who gave me Steinbeck, Marquez, London, and Hemingway, and had a faith to move mountains; my grandmother a curandera who lived her life amongst the spirits and gave Juarez, Barbas de Oro, meaning; my grandfather who worked from sunrise to sunset and still found time to drink, womanize, and brawl (ours was a love/hate thing).
"As for myself, I’m not wealthy, and yet, I don’t dream of riches. I want to be read; and yet, I don’t want notoriety -- 'almost famous' is good ... I’m egotistical enough to think what I have to say is of importance; and yet, believe as a poet, I’m just okay (three of my siblings are far superior writers).
"I was raised in a farming and ranching community in Texas, but my father’s ministry led him to the tough streets of the Chicago area and I followed his path. These two very different dynamics also color my writing, and when I marry them, it can be very powerful. Still, for me it’s like singing blues or gospels, they’re different in their ethics, but both birthed from the well of longing and sorrow.
"I suppose this is enough of a bio -- I’m getting 'sic.' Oh yeah, one more thing, I love Cesar Vallejo. He’s the poet crying in the wilderness ..." Drop him a line at EsteWolf@aol.com.
Esteban's works here at Unlikely Stories are:
2003:
For Lisa--Black Ants and Fruit Flies
2002:
represent
catfish songs & simple prayers
The Story of Bear and Wolf and the Dream
Summer of the Sparrow
She Tells Me This Shit Ten Years Too Late
Smiling Death Songs and Other Poems
I Act Like a Chimpanzee and Howl Like a Motherfucker
2001:
Tonight I'm an Orphan...
i hear a stream
At Las Cruces
Sister, Twilight Is A Thousand Candles God Burns For You