How a Civilization Begins - Softcover

Vargas, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996724796 ISBN 13: 9780996724791

Publisher: Mouthfeel Press, 2022

Synopsis

"Born and raised in Compton, California, Richard Vargas is seeped in the culture of his youth-the fresh beans and tender tortillas, the addict father and close families and cool lowrider. He suffered and delighted in the expectations of his gender, including the sense that a willing woman or couple of beers could sweep the blues away. He served in the military, graduated from an MFA program too late in life to reap its employment benefits, acquired a profound political sensibility, and kept on going back to the world for more," writes Margaret Randall in her introduction to How a Civilization Begins. In his characteristically candid American vernacular, Richard delivers once again a poetry collection that explores the intersection between the personal and the political, and the grief of losing a father to addiction and its lifelong consequences. Vulnerable and raw at once, Richard does not sugar-coat the realities of living in a time of contradictions and political divisions. 

About this title

About the Author

Richard Vargas earned his B.A. at Cal State University, Long Beach, where he studied under Gerald Locklin and Richard Lee. He edited/published five issues of The Tequila Review, 1978-1980, and twelve issues of The Más Tequila Review from 2010-2015. Vargas received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, 2010. He was recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers' Conference Hispanic Writer Award. He was on the faculties of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and the 2015 Taos Summer Writers' Conference. Published collections: McLife, 2005; American Jesus, 2009; Guernica, revisited, 2014, and a new collection of poems scheduled for publication in Summer 2022. He currently resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding's plane crashed.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mouthfeel Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0996724796
• ISBN 13: 9780996724791
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 134