Poet-scholar Steven Alvarez uses poetic utterance to catalog and enact intersections of Spanish and English in Louisville, Kentucky.The Codex Mojaodicus collects three novels-in-verse, all of which mine, mime, record and disgorge impressions and dissertations of language as it is uttered, stuttered, and felt in a variety of tongues and heads. In these theatrical poems, Alvarez documents a multilingual field, tracing a Xicano genome over and above the landscapes of America.from AZtexts: an interpretation . . . forget Yorope [ !] & looky here at this sad Messico: Messicko is a place of hunger for in these Amurkas where hunger is born . . . a home for hunger . . . death comes from hunger . . . place of trembling . . . of teeth chatter . . . of green glass bottles clinking together & broken shards used as wire fencing . . . a place of torment & where misery abounds . . . & yet a calm place . . . of continuing calm . . . . . . skies: miserly . . . rains there rot soils . . . & lions small & cowardly . . . there horses pigs & dogs become dwarves . . . where Yndios cold as serpents have no souls . . . hairless despicable men . . . flabby degenerate beasts . . . make children w/ their mothersSteven Alvarez is winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Poetry, and is an Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies at the University of Kentucky."
Author Biography
Steven Alvarez is the author of three collections of poetry, including The Pocho Codex (Editorial Paroxismo, 2011), The Xicano Genome (2013), The Codex Mojaodicus (Fence, 2017), winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize. He has also authored two chapbooks, Six Poems from the Codex Mojaodicus (2014, winner of the Seven Kitchens Press Rane Arroyo Poetry Prize) and Un/documented, Kentucky (2016, winner of the Rusty Toque Chapbook Prize). His work has appeared in the Best Experimental Writing (BAX), Berkeley Poetry Review, The Drunken Boat, Fence, Huizache, and Waxwing. Alvarez teaches at the University of Kentucky where he is an Assistant Professor of Writing, Rhetoric & Digital Studies.
