Breathing Between the Lines - Poems

In Breathing Between the Lines, the writer returns to poetry, her first love. From childhood, writing poems has been both a refuge and a release through the power of her own imagination. In 1988, however, Martinez's poetry was used against her in a federal indictment for smuggling Salvadoran refugees into the United States. The incriminating poem carried this punch line: "In my country, we sing of a baby in a manger, finance death squads". Seven long months later, she was acquitted. After the trial - "a poet's nightmare, in which words, so full of liberating possibilities, were twisted and used against me" - Martinez's poetry dried up. Years passed before "the miracle" of writing finally brought her reconciliation and a return to sanity from the searing experience. Once again, poetry now drives her life, fills her days, and gives meaning to a world gone crazy.

About the author

Demetria Martínez is the author of the novel Mother Tongue, which won the 1994 Western States Book Award for fiction. She writes a national monthly column for the National Catholic Reporter and is involved in the Arizona Border Rights Project, which documents abuses by the U.S. Border Patrol. She lives in Tucson.

Product details

• Authors: Demetria Martinez, Demetria Martínez
• Publisher: The University of Arizona Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.1997
• EAN: 9780816517985
• ISBN: 978-0-8165-1798-5
• No. of pages: 61
• Dimensions: 142 mm x 237 mm x 6 mm
• Weight: 136 g
• Series: Camino del Sol
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies