Loose Woman

by Sandra Cisneros

Overview

A candid, sexy and wonderfully mood-strewn collection of poetry that celebrates the female aspects of love, from the reflective to the overtly erotic. "Poignant, sexy. . . lyrical, passionate. . . cool and delicate. . . hot as a chili pepper."—Boston Globe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679755272
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/28/1995
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	39,538
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954. Internationally acclaimed for her poetry and fiction, she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Lannan Literary Award and the American Book Award, and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation. Cisneros is the author of the novels The House on Mango Street and Caramelo, a collection of short stories Woman Hollering Creek, a book of poetry Loose Woman, and a children's book Hairs/Pelitos. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Hometown:

San Antonio, Texas

Date of Birth:

December 20, 1954

Place of Birth:

Chicago, Illinois

Education:

B.A., Loyola University, 1976; M.F.A., University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, 1978

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments
	Little Clown, My Heart	3
	You Bring Out the Mexican in Me	4
	Original Sin	7
	Old Maids	9
	I Let Him Take Me	11
	Extreme Unction	12
	A Few Items to Consider	14
	I Am So in Love I Grow a New Hymen	16
	Your Name Is Mine	18
	Something Like Rivers Ran	19
	You My Saltwater Pearl	21
	You Like to Give and Watch Me My Pleasure	23
	Christ You Delight Me	25
	En Route to My Lover I Am Detained by Too Many Cities and Human Frailty	26
	Dulzura	27
	You Called Me Corazon	28
	Love Poem for a Non-Believer	29
	The Heart Rounds Up the Usual Suspects	33
	Waiting for a Lover	34
	Well, If You Insist	36
	Pumpkin Eater	37
	I Am So Depressed I Feel Like Jumping in the River Behind My House but Won't Because I'm Thirty-Eight and Not Eighteen	39
	Bay Poem from Berkeley	40
	After Everything	41
	I Want to Be a Father Like the Men	43
	El Alacran Guero	45
	Thing in My Shoe	47
	Night Madness Poem	49
	I Don't Like Being in Love	51
	Amorcito Corazon	52
	A Little Grief Like Gouache	53
	Full Moon and You're Not Here	54
	My Friend Turns Beautiful Before My Eyes	56
	Perras	58
	Unos Cuantos Piquetitos	59
	With Lorenzo at the Center of the Universe, el Zocalo, Mexico City	60
	I Awake in the Middle of the Night and Wonder If You've Been Taken	64
	Small Madness	65
	Heart, My Lovely Hobo	69
	I Am on My Way to Oklahoma to Bury the Man I Nearly Left My Husband For	70
	Cloud	72
	Tu Que Sabes de Amor	73
	Once Again I Prove the Theory of Relativity	74
	Fan of a Floating Woman	76
	That Beautiful Boy Who Lives Across from the Handy Andy	77
	Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman	78
	Down There	79
	Los Desnudos: A Triptych	86
	Mexicans in France	91
	My Nemesis Arrives After a Long Hiatus	93
	A Man in My Bed Like Cracker Crumbs	96
	Bienvenido Poem for Sophie	97
	Arturito the Amazing Baby Olmec Who Is Mine by Way of Water	98
	Jumping off Roofs	100
	Why I Didn't	102
	Las Girlfriends	105
	Champagne Poem for La Josie	107
	Still Life with Potatoes, Pearls, Raw Meat, Rhinestones, Lard, and Horse Hooves	108
	Vino Tinto	111
	Loose Woman	112

Editorial Reviews

The three parts of this spirited collection address the heart, ``spangled again and lopsided.'' In her second book of poems, Cisneros ( My Wicked Wicked Ways ) presents a street-smart, fearlessly liberated persona who raves, sometimes haphazardly, always with abandon, about the real thing: ``I am . . . / The lust goddess without guilt. / The delicious debauchery. You bring out / the primordial exquisiteness in me.'' As if breaking all the rules (``Because someone once / said Don't / do that! / you like to do it''), she delves with urgency into things carnal--sequins, cigars, black lace bras and menstrual blood. Readers of Cisneros's coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street (which Knopf is reissuing in hardcover) will recognize the almost mythic undertow of her voice; it never weakens. We meet again a powerful, fiercely independent woman of Mexican heritage, though this time innocence has long been lost. For her the worlds of language and life are one and the same: ``Lorenzo, I forget what's real. / I mix up the details of what happened / with what I witnessed inside my / universe.'' These poems--short-lined, chantlike, biting--insistently rework the same themes to tap them. In the end, however, despite the accessible boldness of the writing, the poems lack the depth, the complexity and the lyrical magic of the author's fiction. QPB alternate; first serial to the New Yorker. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

``You bring out the Mexican in me./The hunkered thick dark spiral./The core of a heart howl./The bitter bile./The tequila lgrimas on Saturday all/through next weekend Sunday.'' In this typically direct, sensual, and bitingly colloquial poem, Cisneros is addressing a lover, but she might as well be addressing the act of writing itself, which clearly brings out the best in her, along with the passion she associates with her Mexican roots. As in Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories (LJ 4/1/91), one of LJ's Best Books of 1991, Cisneros deftly explores the consequences of being Hispanic and a woman-in particular, being the tough, independent free-spirited ``loose woman'' of her title. The poems that result are brilliant and shimmering and sharp-tongued and just occasionally a little too similar. Highly recommended where good poetry is read and essential for all Hispanic collections.-Barbara Hoffert, ``Library Journal''

Library Journal