When There Were No Borders - poems by Raúl Sánchez/Tlatecatl

Advance Praise for 

When There Were No Borders 

Sánchez writes borderless in borderless times. He breaks through the ancient  Mexica figure of death and transformation, Coatlicue, to poems as pyramids,  to the Sea of the Salish in the Pacific Northwest and on to cool-rebel Pachuco  dialect of the US-Mexico borderlands. He cooks on a rotating rainbow 

colored pan, he spices, he refuses to present his “papers” at the border stop.  There are nectars, harvests, the always-farmworker fields, a detention center  to tend to with resources and a poet. Open this collection — hold on, there  is a “pirinola,” an ever spinning umbrella-shaped candy with a pointed  tip burning colors, lights and stories that will take you to Latinx multi 

dimensional magic. A precise, moving mural, this text of visitations of “life,  precious life!” Sanchez’s delights as he writes, as he tears across those borderlines,  dancing. Magnificent poetics to take home and to take you out. 

– Juan Felipe Herrera 

Poet Laureate of the United States Emeritus 

Raúl Sánchez’s long-awaited 2nd book is a gift, a gateway, a harvest. These poems present and re-present our “tongue,” our “language,” our “culture and pride.” Steeped in history and “blood blood blood” unforgotten and dignified, these poems are never what you expect yet are as familiar as an ancestral landscape. Deeply layered like culture itself, this book es una flor, multi-petalled, many-voiced — sin frontera and utterly unique. From rich love poems to Nerudaesque declamaciónes to canciones and cantos, this book  represents as we were, and are, When There Were No Borders, by presenting the multiverse that is US of America through the voice of one, Raúl Sánchez, crossing borders. 

– Lorna Dee Cervantes 

Chicana poet and activist 

Author of EMPLUMADA, DRIVE, SIENTO...

These versos harken back to the original masters of the movimiento. Raul Sanchez reminds me why I started writing poems so long ago. They burn with witness and life. 

– Luis Alberto Urrea 

author of The House of Broken Angels 

In “When There Were No Borders” poet Raúl Sánchez carves for us an especially  didactic milagro with gleaming Mexican cultural lessons in verse. Since the  1960’s Chicanx poets have hailed the Pre-Columbian Gods and Goddesses. He enters this arena expanding the traditional pantheon of deities, stimulating  the young and the old, the Chicano youth and Northwest populations alike, (Latinx almost 12 per cent of Washington state population). His poetry is for the woke and those who want to wake up. It is current and inscribes us in the historical border and its porosity, for a man who learned English as a child and reflects for us through his magical words, the richness of interstitial territories of mind and land, for the last fifty years. 

– Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs 

Poet and Professor, Departments of Modern Languages 

and Women Gender & Sexuality Studies, Seattle U.  

Light, sound, and language create paths of profound depth and compassion  in this collection of poetry. As symbols and languages intertwine, a dancing spectrum of experiences shines from the many stories and images of these poems like light through a prism. “Tonight, I find myself sewing memories,” writes the poet, and each poem in this collection is stitched with care and suffused with vitality, urgency, and beauty. 

– Laura Da’ 

Author of Tributaries, winner of the American Book Award 

I know Raúl Sánchez best as a poet colleague working in juvenile detention, an experience that Sánchez conveys in several poems. In one he describes  these youth poems as “gems, strung together like diamonds, after the rain.” I 

apply that image to the poems in this book, too. Sánchez begins with  poems about his Mexican childhood – his mother making tortillas, and the  clap of her hands. He moves on to poems about his family’s relationship to  America, such as his father’s work as a bracero during World War II. Then  there are poems about Sánchez’s Mexican-American experience, including  being subjected to bigotry; and finally there are poems about Sánchez’s  Pacific Northwest home. In all, these poems are gems that are beautiful as a strand because they originate in Sánchez’s open heart, and they glitter with 

his honesty, clarity, and sense of discovery. 

– Richard Gold 

Founder of the Pongo Poetry Project