Professor Próspero Saíz, in black, with Max

Professor Próspero Saíz, Retired

Areas: Literary theory and criticism; literature and philosophy; poetry; aesthetics; Late Medieval literature; genre theory.

Languages: Spanish, German, French, Old French, Old Provencal, Middle High German, Middle English, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, Latin.

Office
956 Van Hise
Phone: 262-1158
E-mail:

Office Hours: by apt.

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Próspero Saíz is a poet, writer, theorist, and translator. He has published three stunning books of poetry: the bird of nothing & other poems; horse; and chants of nezahualcoyotl & obsidian glyph.

Some of Saíz' poems have been translated into French, Portuguese, and Finnish; others are currently being translated into Chinese. He has been published in Abraxas, Limiar, RiverSedge, and Le Guepard. He is currently writing a lyrical prose narrative: The Chaco Canyon Trilogy: (1) Joe Poor Dog & the Santa Fe Opera, (2) Maques, (3) The Albino & Chaco.

One of Saíz' translators, Professor of Anglo-American Studies Maria Irene Ramalho of Coimbra University, Portugal, notes that the poet "adamantly rejects what he calls bio-graphism, along with its social advantages or disadvantages...his many gestures of deliberate reinvention, in his poems, of the lyric cry, place him in the broadest cosmopolitan tradition of contemporary poetry in any language..." The lyric cry is at the heart of Saíz' poetry.

the bird of nothing and other poems

In the 100-page title poem of the bird of nothing & other poems Saíz takes up caesura, silence, death & eros, earth & sky, the night and the "effacement," through writing, of Native American culture. Other lyrics, fragments, aphorisms and prose poems testify to the poet's rich Southwestern heritage. The poem "malinche" is destined to become a classic.

The collection closes with the book of pronouns, five chilling introspective poems on being and existence. Professor Maria Irene Ramalho has written: "The complex long poem ... presents itself as a truly deliberate act of interruption. It is as if the great book of nature/culture had been interrupted in its Coleridgean dreaming of meanings by its own successive attempts at inscription, and only fragments remained: a palimpsest of fossils ... looking like a newly discovered multiglossal hieroglyph. As the poem progresses, one language keeps breaking in upon the other to build a scattered exchange of tongues, voices and traditions; or of sounds, shapes and images. In manifold and suggestive manners--now solemnly, now jocosely--birds of all times, places and cultures irrupt, like an enduring metaphor of poetic language, as impossible inscription."

The book is 7" X 10"; 168 pages; sewn and wrapped in Teton Clay paper covers; illustrated. Includes a signed & numbered edition of fifty copies. ISBN 0-941160-11-4 (Ghost Pony Press: Madison, WI, 1993).

horse

In horse, a collection of five poems, the poet's verse expresses a singular lyrical freedom. In "the silence of lascaux" Saíz pierces, with haunting precision, the veil of the ancient, fateful connection of the horse and mankind, and meditates on the sacred role of the horse as a wellspring of dread and art.

The long poem "document" explores the role of the horse in the destruction of the Peoples of the Great Plains, the Spanish conquest, the incursion into the American Southwest, and the fascist bombing of the Basque town of Guernica as presented by Picasso.

The last three poems, "horse," "gorge," and "rain-mare" invoke timeless visions--now hallucinatory, now dream-like--rooted in the poet's beloved Southwest.This exquisite collection demonstrates the remarkable range of Saíz' brilliant style.

The book is 6" X 9" 24 pages; hand-sewn into Confetti Rust paper covers; illustrated. Includes a signed & numbered edition of 50 copies. ISBN 0-941160-12-2 (Ghost Pony Press: Madison, 1996).

coyotl

In chants of nezahualcoyotl & obsidian glyph the poem titled "chants of nezahualcoyotl" explores the role and meaning of poetry (in its sacred and profane manifestations) in pre-Columbian Aztec Mexico by focusing on the greatest of Nahuatl poets, Fasting Coyote. In a quasi-epic manner, the final part of the poem presents the Spanish Conquest and the fall of Tenochtitlan.

Here the poet offers us a magical combination of the lyric cry and poetic documentation. "chants" insists that the poem at one level is free and transcendent in its cry. And yet, at another level, it is a kind of time-bound ethno-graphics, since any document is obliged to show what it can (again), to uncover things (again), to say "yes" to repetition...again...and again.

"obsidian glyph" is a collection of fascinating lyrical thoughts on the sacred rites and poetic practices of the Aztecs in the time of the Quinto Sol or 5th Sun.

7" X 10" 102 pages; sewn & wrapped in French Construction Whitewash paper covers; illustrated; pronunciation key & glossary. Includes a signed & numbered edition of fifty copies. ISBN 0-941160-13-0 (Ghost Pony Press: Madison, 1996). The copy describing these texts was written by Scott Luedtke.