Publisher's Synopsis
Carlos Cortéz Koyokuikatl was an artist, poet, photographer, muralist, columnist, labor and anti-war activist. His contributions as a visual artist are found in linoleum and wood printing block posters as well as his scratchboard images are part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Many of his drawings also appeared in the Industrial Workers of the World monthly newspaper and in books such as Pablo Cruz & the American Dream, Cold Chicago: Play, and in his own books, De Kansas a Califas & Back to Chicago, Crystal-Gazing the Amber Fluid & other Wobbly poems, and Where Are Voices? The poems included in this collection reach from the late 1950's to 2000, reflecting his abilities in American Haiku, epic accounts, elegiac reflections, protest poems, love poems, and satirical pieces. He worked mainly in English but there's evidence of his own Spanish-language skills. Cortéz also explored the traditional Mexican language Nahuatl in his later years which are also included in this collection. His artwork is held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Smithsonian and galleries in the USA and Europe. The name Koyokuikatl meaning "coyote's song" in Nahuatl first came to him while he was serving his 18-months sentence as a World War 2 conscientious objector and only ceremoniously adopted in 1982 in a Mexica ritual. He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on August 13, 1923, and passed away from natural causes at home in Chicago on January 19, 2005.
