The Sadness of Days: Selected and New Poems by Luis Omar Salinas (review)

Reviews 91 Jack London on the Road: The Tramp Diary and Other Hobo Writings. Edited by Richard W. Etulain. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1979. 209 pages, $12.95.) The first complete printing of London’s Tramp Diary, Jack London on the Road attempts to correct the tendency of biographers and London scholars to look past London’s tramp experiences. By focusing solely on accounts of these experiences in London’swritings, Etulain opens a new facet of London’s career and reveals a broader Jack London than critics have recognized. —Scott Cheney Maasaw: Profile of a Hopi God. By Ekkehart Malotki and Michael Lomatuway ’ma. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987. 271 pages, $24.95/ $14.95.) The eleventh volume of the American Tribal Religions monograph series, Maasaw: Profile of a Hopi God describes Maasaw as he emerges in a wide range of folk beliefs. This volume rounds out Maasaw’s story image first pre­ sented in its companion volume, Stories of Maasaw, A Hopi God and will inter­ est anthropologists, linguists, folklorists and those generally interested in the Hopi culture and oral tradition. —from the book cover The Sadness of Days: Selected and New Poems. ByLuis Omar Salinas. (Hous­ ton: Arte Publico Press, 1987. 160 pages, $8.) These are not poems for the faint of heart. Full of anger, blood, spittle, and venom, these poems speak of the clashes of the world: between young and and old, between rich and poor, between educated and uneducated, between living and dead. Luis Omar Salinas’s poetic voice expresses itself in the lan­ guage of darkness. Consider these poems as examples: “Prelude to Darkness,” “As Evening Lays Dying,” “Darkness Under the Trees,” “I Live Among the Shadows,” “It Will BeDarkness Soon,” and “In the Thick of Darkness.” Don’t look in this book for “have a nice day” sentiment. What you’ll find in these pages is raw, unpolished, angry, and confused emotion. —Charlotte M. Wright A Shroud in the Family. By Lionel G. Garcia. (Houston: Arte Publico Press, 1987. 319 pages, $9.00.) A tongue-in-cheek satire, A Shroud in the Family concentrates on present day Houston and a protagonist beleaguered by Mexican-American social and political problems. Andy Garcia, the narrator, introduces a varied cast of semitragic and comic characters and demythologizes the nationalistic saga of Texas through their family histories. —from the book cover ...