John Olivares Espinoza

“The new Date Fruit Elegies by John Olivares Espinoza…[is] on my bedside, bringing me infinite pleasure.”
—Sandra Cisneros, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant

“John Olivares Espinoza has written a fine book of love poems to a way of life that goes frequently overlooked. The gardeners of earth’s Eden are presented here as complex individuals whose hands bleed, pray, sculpt and even usher an intuitive but slightly troubled young man toward a productive childhood.”
—Rigoberto González, El Paso Times

“John Olivares Espinoza celebrates the dignity of work and the abiding strength of family in these honest, humbling poems.”
—Gary Young, Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County and winner of the 2009
2009 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America

“For me personally, John finds beauty and wisdom in unexpected places and I am always grateful that he expands my horizons.”
—Dr. Warren Ilchman, former Director of The Paul and Daisy Soros
Fellowship for New Americans

Two young, wage-earning Chicanos find themselves in an odyssey searching for a dinner other than cheese and vanilla pudding in the poem “Foraging.” A mom and her two sons split a cheeseburger three ways in “Contemporary American Hunger.” In “Aching Knees in Palm Springs,” a teenage speaker spends eight hours on his knees pulling out weeds.

These are the types of people and situations that inhabit the poems of The Date Fruit Elegies, my first full-length collection of poetry after my two chapbooks, Aluminum Times (2002) and Gardeners of Eden (2000). The first drafts of some of these poems in The Date Fruit Elegies were written at the age of twenty, when I started writing “serious” poems in workshops. The raw energy of a writer finding his voice was too rare for me to toss aside my earlier poems, so for eight years I tinkered, revised, and chiseled out what I hope to be good, finished poems. I hope you feel that way, too.

My poetics is dictated by the importance of imagery, fresh phrasing, rhythm, and “the turn.” I hope to write a poem that is vivid in language and engaging in emotion. When the poems in The Date Fruit Elegies began to fall into place, I held hopes in my heart that my readers will feel they have walked around Indio in the work worn-out shoes of my characters.

Otherwise, welcome to john-olivares-espinoza.com where you can find out more information about my work and going-abouts. Click on the links above for your desired destination.