Lorna Dee Cervantes in Passion

by Mary Gunderson

I think I found my poet. When I saw the title of one of Lorna Dee Cervantes poems, Cannery Town in August, I knew immediately that I was going to fall in love with her. It doesn’t matter if she is talking about love or tuna cans, Lorna Dee Cervantes writes each word with such passion. I desired so to read each poem over and over again.

She sees absolutely everything around her and describes it so it becomes alive. In way, you feel you are a character, a seer in the poems. In Cannery Town in August there is an incredible verse that makes you feel like you’re either the seer behind the spotlight or the figures within the spotlight, “They spotlight those who walk like a dream, with no one waiting in the shadows to palm them back to living.”

Her verses flow into another and you go in and out of reading it slow or fast. She brings you into her rhythm of thought not rhythm of style. And there is no rhyme, except in heart and soul.

There is hope, but also grief within her poems. In her carrying of those elements she reminded me a lot of Emily Dickinson. Both Lorna Dee Cervantes and Emily Dickinson bring you so into their poems and that mix of hope and grief a deep love or sense of being lost. Even though their styles are very different, Emily Dickinson with her short lines and Lorna Dee Cervantes with very descriptive long lines, they carry such a strength and passion in every word they write.

Lorna Dee Cervantes in passion brings you also into your own passion…the passion of this world with it’s hummingbirds and cannery towns.