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Ricardo Mario Amezquita

Born: 1948 in Sterling, IL
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Amezquita is a native of Sterling. He now lives in DeKalb.

Biography: Ricardo Mario Amezquita was born and raised in Sterling, Illinois. He graduated from high school in 1966 and served in the US Air Force until 1970. After graduating from Sauk Valley Community College and Sangamon State University (now the University of Illinois in Springfield), he served as a legal advocate for migrant workers. He also was an academic advisory for college students and taught First-Year English and English as a second language at a variety of colleges. Later he worked as a contract specialist for medical equipment and supplies for the Veterans Administration.


Awards:

Primary Literary Genre(s): Poetry

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

E-Mail: ricbonnie@comcast.net
Web: https://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mmartin-rodriguez/index_files/vhAmezquitaRicardo.htm


Selected Titles

The She Kissed El Paco's Lips Now! Or April in Dekalb
ISBN: 0984652388 OCLC:

Indian Paintbrush Poets 2012

Ric Amezquita's Then She Kissed El Paco's Lips Now! Or April in DeKalb makes you wonder if you've entered another world, or perhaps have begun to see this one clearly for the first time. Unknown is everywhere, he writes, calmly subversive. In whatever ways he inhabits these poems-as a bewildered Chicano kid in the Air Force; a woefully underpaid, traveling teacher; a bored-to-tears bureaucrat, Villista, curandero, and small-town sage-Ric is someone I want to ride along with, a man whose songs range from street corner cries of political outrage to lullabies of almost unbearable tenderness. These are poems noctambulous, dream pieces, icons of two sides and two languages and two places at once, toes that hold the world, songs of Chihuahua and cries of Nigeria, Jesus' last thoughts and snakes uroboros, goddesses of nourishment and cool corpses of Elvis - all originals set out by an original, a 'pilot, co-pilot, navigator, / nose, dorsal, waist, tail, ball turret-gunner / and now bombardier . . . Softly fall the balms of poetry - no need to duck and cover. This is Ricardo Mario Amezquita's first book. He is a poet that will become known rapidly!

 

 

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