Reseña del libro "Temple of Curiosities (en Inglés)"
What are the dreams of the migrant?— Of the dreamer who carries the place left behind and must infuse the place they find themselves now steeped in? These are measured poems that deftly seek balance between deep longing for past place and deep hesitancy toward a new land, where “between is an altar to the same moon / the same stars hung in a garland of glimmer” and where “The migrant looks up / and like a ghost — here or there — / is home.” The dreams, then, mix curiosities of each place, and Hastings’ mixed approach to the forms of the poems seems exactly right: the well-wrought free-form yielding at times to the structures of sestina, or villanelle, which become almost resting places, or supports: scaffolding for the muralist. But Hastings is not sentimental in any of this. Beyond the loss of landscape to fire, there is the loss of culture in the beating heart of San Francisco; the loss of colleagues and friends “beneath City Lights.” It is a hard look back, and a hard look now, that nonetheless manages to stay balanced, and tight, and in those respects, hopeful when gazing in either direction. —Paul T. Hogan, author of Inventories Across the river in Tonawanda a whistle blows like a last breath tripled —the mother, the father, the dog. The train moves on, the breath moves on… These words from Katherine Hastings’ spectacular poem “Tonawanda” might serve as emblems for Hastings’ wide-ranging and deep Temple of Curiosities, for this volume’s temple is peopled with the tripled/quadrupled breaths of lovers, of lovers of nature, supplicants against grief & cruelty, of migrants, whether the poet herself or others. Curiosities are here, too—not oddities but deep, minute-to-minute/year-to-year engagements with the world and what it brings—whether the blistering words of a racist former California governor, the contrapuntal poem of an imprisoned immigrant, a loved one’s surviving cancer, the celebration of a native city—even the simple walking of a beloved dog. Katherine Hastings’ Temple of Curiosity will at times inform you, relax you, or infuriate you against injustice, but steadily, steadily will show you love in fierceness and tenderness. —Gerald Fleming, author of The Bastard and the Bishop Katherine Hastings sings her devotions for her beloved geographies, her empathic attention for the oppressed and powerless, her loves and losses, in a voice at once knowing, lyrically beautiful, and emotionally resonant: “We drink the city as though from a fountain / from which only ecstasy can spring.” A larger question hovering above and within these masterly crafted poems is “where is home?” One of her answers in her curious search is that “nothing is promised / but this moment.” Writing as a keen participant, an ethical citizen that echoes poets as committed to their connections to place and people as Pattiann Rogers and Wendell Berry, Hastings offers us maps of not only her “temple of curiosities,” but of her heart.” — Philip Terman, author of This Blossoming Everything (Saddle Road Press)
