Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet

By Dixie Salazar

"Duality" is at the center of Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet, a striking collection of poems both intimate and grand. The poet, Dixie Salazar, has spent a lifetime forging her own identity out of two cultures: "On one side was my father's world: Spanish speaking from las monta as. On the other side was my mother's world: a deep Southern drawl wafting from the magnolia and chinaberry trees." As her poems reveal, she is a product of both cultures but not completely at home in either one.
In the two sections of the book--"Inside" and "Outside"--parallelism and symmetry interact with themes both public and private. Flamenco Hips and Red Mud Feet presents thirty-nine poems in free verse and traditional poetic forms, especially the sonnet and adaptations of the sonnet. The sonnet--usually consisting of the octet (eight lines) that sets up the main idea of the poem and the sestet (six lines) that resolves, answers or completes the poem--is a natural form for a poet whose identity is divided. Double sonnets and "double-linked sonnets doubled" reflect the duality the poet feels inside her skin. And the poems written to and for a "lost sister" reinforce the theme.

Throughout this provocative book, Salazar navigates the alienation of her cultural in-between-ness. By the end, she appears to become more comfortable with her status of "outsider," deciding that she doesn't need to give in to pressures to pick a side or to accept others' ideas of where her own "borders" begin or end.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0816528519
• ISBN13: 9780816528516
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.7"