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Rant, chant, and chisme (gossip): three types of expression that might seem mutually exclusive. In these poems by Amalia Ortiz, they are anything but. This brilliant performance poet weaves her second- and third-generation experience with a deep understanding of her parents' first-generation struggles and the sharp edge her own adds. More and more, our great performance poets are leaving their words on the page as well as in the moment. It's a good thing, because this is where those of us not privileged to hear Ortiz in person can read and reread them. I will remember Ortiz' cotton-picking hands, her lullaby for an immigrant ocelot, her dangerous love and girl-strolling-down-Nogalitos Street for years to come. This is a book worth having! --Margaret Randall, author of As If the Empty Chair: Poems for the disappeared / Como si la silla vac a: Poemas para los desaparecidos and The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones About Rant. Chant. Chisme.: National slam poetry phenom Amalia Ortiz proves that the improvisational jazz and rap riffs of the slam stage can in fact translate to the page in unapologetic, electric and rich poetry... Ortiz is the first Latina poet ever to reach the final round at the National Poetry Slam. This robust volume features forty poems in four movements. The voices are bold; they rail against social and political injustice in the borderlands... --San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 21, 2015 How does one describe the depths of feeling and passion elicited by the poem songs in Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs? Shocking and jolting our sense of what is poetry, what is political poetry, these pieces impel us to take action. They are wild horses running and bolting across the page but with a sense of purpose and direction they lead us to consider our own courage or lack thereof. We ask ourselves, somos valientes? Are we courageous? Rooted in what is a part performance art, part musical performance, and part spoken word Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs invites readers to enter the world where we must take action. --Dr. Norma E. Cant , professor, Trinity University; author of Caniculas and Transcendental Train Yard This whole book stands up and dances off the page! It sings, it chants, it howls, it performs. You're MINE, Ortiz says, You're helpless against my song. It will entrance you and alter your state of mind! And the musicality of poems like me acuerdo, These Hands which Have Never Picked Cotton, tu love es no good, and I'm Gonna Buy me a Gun will not be confined to the page, but will redefine the essence of poetry as song, as human voice, as story. This performance poetry is not planned or blocked on a stage; it is a human cry dancing out its genius. It comes off the page and rants, chants, and chismoleas all around our hearts and in our faces. If it is possible to put performance poetry on a flat page and have it reincarnate itself the minute someone reads it--as a five-dimensional opera that struts and saunters and syncopates and sings--Amalia Ortiz has done it! --Carmen Tafolla, 2015 Poet Laureate of Texas; author of Curandera, Rebozos, Sonnets and Salsa, and This River Here Rant. Chant. Chisme. is suited for the tumult of our time. Ortiz both honors great Tejano writers of the past and forges her own style. An activist, actor and writer, she's compiled many of the pieces that she's performed and perfected on different stages--from academic conferences to San Antonio poetry slams to HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Of course, it's always a challenge to keep performance pieces still enough for the printed page. To do so, Ortiz calls on the poetic forms of Tafolla and Tejano legend Raul Salinas. She breaks new ground by covering topics from Elvis to Coltrane to eight-liner slot machines. Ortiz also cultivates a powerful voice for women from a Latina perspective. --The Texas Observer

Rant, chant, and chisme (gossip): three types of expression that might seem mutually exclusive. In these poems by Amalia Ortiz, they are anything but. This brilliant performance poet weaves her second- and third-generation experience with a deep understanding of her parents' first-generation struggles and the sharp edge her own adds. More and more, our great performance poets are leaving their words on the page as well as in the moment. It's a good thing, because this is where those of us not privileged to hear Ortiz in person can read and reread them. I will remember Ortiz' cotton-picking hands, her lullaby for an immigrant ocelot, her dangerous love and girl-strolling-down-Nogalitos Street for years to come. This is a book worth having! --Margaret Randall, author of As If the Empty Chair: Poems for the disappeared / Como si la silla vac a: Poemas para los desaparecidos and The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones Rant. Chant. Chisme. is suited for the tumult of our time. Ortiz both honors great Tejano writers of the past and forges her own style. An activist, actor and writer, she's compiled many of the pieces that she's performed and perfected on different stages--from academic conferences to San Antonio poetry slams to HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Of course, it's always a challenge to keep performance pieces still enough for the printed page. To do so, Ortiz calls on the poetic forms of Tafolla and Tejano legend Raul Salinas. She breaks new ground by covering topics from Elvis to Coltrane to eight-liner slot machines. Ortiz also cultivates a powerful voice for women from a Latina perspective. --The Texas Observer About Rant. Chant. Chisme.: National slam poetry phenom Amalia Ortiz proves that the improvisational jazz and rap riffs of the slam stage can in fact translate to the page in unapologetic, electric and rich poetry... Ortiz is the first Latina poet ever to reach the final round at the National Poetry Slam. This robust volume features forty poems in four movements. The voices are bold; they rail against social and political injustice in the borderlands... --San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 21, 2015 How does one describe the depths of feeling and passion elicited by the poem songs in Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs? Shocking and jolting our sense of what is poetry, what is political poetry, these pieces impel us to take action. They are wild horses running and bolting across the page but with a sense of purpose and direction they lead us to consider our own courage or lack thereof. We ask ourselves, somos valientes? Are we courageous? Rooted in what is a part performance art, part musical performance, and part spoken word Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs invites readers to enter the world where we must take action. --Dr. Norma E. Cant , professor, Trinity University; author of Caniculas and Transcendental Train Yard This whole book stands up and dances off the page! It sings, it chants, it howls, it performs. You're MINE, Ortiz says, You're helpless against my song. It will entrance you and alter your state of mind! And the musicality of poems like me acuerdo, These Hands which Have Never Picked Cotton, tu love es no good, and I'm Gonna Buy me a Gun will not be confined to the page, but will redefine the essence of poetry as song, as human voice, as story. This performance poetry is not planned or blocked on a stage; it is a human cry dancing out its genius. It comes off the page and rants, chants, and chismoleas all around our hearts and in our faces. If it is possible to put performance poetry on a flat page and have it reincarnate itself the minute someone reads it--as a five-dimensional opera that struts and saunters and syncopates and sings--Amalia Ortiz has done it! --Carmen Tafolla, 2015 Poet Laureate of Texas; author of Curandera, Rebozos, Sonnets and Salsa, and This River Here

About Rant. Chant. Chisme.: National slam poetry phenom Amalia Ortiz proves that the improvisational jazz and rap riffs of the slam stage can in fact translate to the page in unapologetic, electric and rich poetry... Ortiz is the first Latina poet ever to reach the final round at the National Poetry Slam. This robust volume features forty poems in four movements. The voices are bold; they rail against social and political injustice in the borderlands... --San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 21, 2015 This whole book stands up and dances off the page! It sings, it chants, it howls, it performs. You're MINE, Ortiz says, You're helpless against my song. It will entrance you and alter your state of mind! And the musicality of poems like me acuerdo, These Hands which Have Never Picked Cotton, tu love es no good, and I'm Gonna Buy me a Gun will not be confined to the page, but will redefine the essence of poetry as song, as human voice, as story. This performance poetry is not planned or blocked on a stage; it is a human cry dancing out its genius. It comes off the page and rants, chants, and chismoleas all around our hearts and in our faces. If it is possible to put performance poetry on a flat page and have it reincarnate itself the minute someone reads it--as a five-dimensional opera that struts and saunters and syncopates and sings--Amalia Ortiz has done it! --Carmen Tafolla, 2015 Poet Laureate of Texas; author of Curandera, Rebozos, Sonnets and Salsa, and This River Here Rant, chant, and chisme (gossip): three types of expression that might seem mutually exclusive. In these poems by Amalia Ortiz, they are anything but. This brilliant performance poet weaves her second- and third-generation experience with a deep understanding of her parents' first-generation struggles and the sharp edge her own adds. More and more, our great performance poets are leaving their words on the page as well as in the moment. It's a good thing, because this is where those of us not privileged to hear Ortiz in person can read and reread them. I will remember Ortiz' cotton-picking hands, her lullaby for an immigrant ocelot, her dangerous love and girl-strolling-down-Nogalitos Street for years to come. This is a book worth having! --Margaret Randall, author of As If the Empty Chair: Poems for the disappeared / Como si la silla vac a: Poemas para los desaparecidos and The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones Rant. Chant. Chisme. is suited for the tumult of our time. Ortiz both honors great Tejano writers of the past and forges her own style. An activist, actor and writer, she's compiled many of the pieces that she's performed and perfected on different stages--from academic conferences to San Antonio poetry slams to HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Of course, it's always a challenge to keep performance pieces still enough for the printed page. To do so, Ortiz calls on the poetic forms of Tafolla and Tejano legend Raul Salinas. She breaks new ground by covering topics from Elvis to Coltrane to eight-liner slot machines. Ortiz also cultivates a powerful voice for women from a Latina perspective. --The Texas Observer How does one describe the depths of feeling and passion elicited by the poem songs in Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs? Shocking and jolting our sense of what is poetry, what is political poetry, these pieces impel us to take action. They are wild horses running and bolting across the page but with a sense of purpose and direction they lead us to consider our own courage or lack thereof. We ask ourselves, somos valientes? Are we courageous? Rooted in what is a part performance art, part musical performance, and part spoken word Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs invites readers to enter the world where we must take action. --Dr. Norma E. Cant , professor, Trinity University; author of Caniculas and Transcendental Train Yard

This whole book stands up and dances off the page! It sings, it chants, it howls, it performs. You're MINE, Ortiz says, You're helpless against my song. It will entrance you and alter your state of mind! And the musicality of poems like me acuerdo, These Hands which Have Never Picked Cotton, tu love es no good, and I'm Gonna Buy me a Gun will not be confined to the page, but will redefine the essence of poetry as song, as human voice, as story. This performance poetry is not planned or blocked on a stage; it is a human cry dancing out its genius. It comes off the page and rants, chants, and chismoleas all around our hearts and in our faces. If it is possible to put performance poetry on a flat page and have it reincarnate itself the minute someone reads it--as a five-dimensional opera that struts and saunters and syncopates and sings--Amalia Ortiz has done it! --Carmen Tafolla, 2015 Poet Laureate of Texas; author of Curandera, Rebozos, Sonnets and Salsa, and This River Here Rant, chant, and chisme (gossip): three types of expression that might seem mutually exclusive. In these poems by Amalia Ortiz, they are anything but. This brilliant performance poet weaves her second- and third-generation experience with a deep understanding of her parents' first-generation struggles and the sharp edge her own adds. More and more, our great performance poets are leaving their words on the page as well as in the moment. It's a good thing, because this is where those of us not privileged to hear Ortiz in person can read and reread them. I will remember Ortiz' cotton-picking hands, her lullaby for an immigrant ocelot, her dangerous love and girl-strolling-down-Nogalitos Street for years to come. This is a book worth having! --Margaret Randall, author of As If the Empty Chair: Poems for the disappeared / Como si la silla vac a: Poemas para los desaparecidos and The Rhizome as a Field of Broken Bones Rant. Chant. Chisme. is suited for the tumult of our time. Ortiz both honors great Tejano writers of the past and forges her own style. An activist, actor and writer, she's compiled many of the pieces that she's performed and perfected on different stages--from academic conferences to San Antonio poetry slams to HBO's Def Poetry Jam. Of course, it's always a challenge to keep performance pieces still enough for the printed page. To do so, Ortiz calls on the poetic forms of Tafolla and Tejano legend Raul Salinas. She breaks new ground by covering topics from Elvis to Coltrane to eight-liner slot machines. Ortiz also cultivates a powerful voice for women from a Latina perspective. --The Texas Observer About Rant. Chant. Chisme.: National slam poetry phenom Amalia Ortiz proves that the improvisational jazz and rap riffs of the slam stage can in fact translate to the page in unapologetic, electric and rich poetry... Ortiz is the first Latina poet ever to reach the final round at the National Poetry Slam. This robust volume features forty poems in four movements. The voices are bold; they rail against social and political injustice in the borderlands... --San Antonio Express-News, Nov. 21, 2015 How does one describe the depths of feeling and passion elicited by the poem songs in Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs? Shocking and jolting our sense of what is poetry, what is political poetry, these pieces impel us to take action. They are wild horses running and bolting across the page but with a sense of purpose and direction they lead us to consider our own courage or lack thereof. We ask ourselves, somos valientes? Are we courageous? Rooted in what is a part performance art, part musical performance, and part spoken word Amalia L. Ortiz's Canci n Cannibal Cabaret & Other Songs invites readers to enter the world where we must take action. --Dr. Norma E. Cant , professor, Trinity University; author of Caniculas and Transcendental Train Yard

Author Information

Amalia Ortiz, Tejana actor, writer, and activist, appeared on three seasons of Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry on HBO and the NAACP Image Awards on FOX. Amalia's debut book of poetry, Rant. Chant. Chisme., published by Wings Press, won the 2015 Poetry Discovery Prize from the Writers' League of Texas Book Awards, and was selected by NBC Latino as one of the 10 Great Latino Books of 2015. Her poem These Hands Which Have Never Picked Cotton was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and a Hedgebrook writer-in-residence alumna where she wrote a Latino musical, Carmen de la Calle. She received a MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. AmaliaOrtiz.net

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