Book Review

“To find an owl I must follow the crow . . .” so writes Mexican American poet Monica Rico in her debut poetry collection, Pinion. This remarkable book is populated by birds (by my count, a couple of dozen). The avian creatures represent the family members closest to Rico. The poet’s father and grandfather flit between pages as owls, her mother as a cardinal, her revered and feared grandmother as a robin (“. . . those same eyes I did not address / as abuela, too scared to lean in for one kiss”), and she herself as a crow. The poet uses birds purposefully, wildly, and seemingly effortlessly as vehicles to illuminate our understanding (as well as her own) of human nature and experience, creating a broad scope of expression and a catalogue of difference.

Pinion intertwines themes of familial love, feminism, racism, and predatory capitalism. Monica Rico grew up in Michigan, in the “constellation named Saginaw,” not far from a General Motors parts factory, where both her grandfather and father worked. Rico’s grandparents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, and Pinion is steeped in her cross-cultural heritage.

The poet has said she couldn’t write about the place she grew up without writing about General Motors. She also wanted to honor her father. In “What General Motors Doesn’t Protect,” Rico writes, “My father worked / in a landscape / of machines lit by spark. / Sheared metal matches / seven days a week. / A meteor shower / too close to earth.” These piercing images describe the bleak landscape of manufacturing, but they also ignite beauty in the imagination. Rico’s masterful craft allows her poems to morph as she performs acts of prestidigitation to portray darker realities, which she tackles with unblinking ferocity.

For instance, in “Yes, In 1952 White Teachers Made Their Students Stand Up and Tell the Class What Their Fathers Did for a Living,” Rico describes her grandfather as “. . . an owl, all feathers / the color of moon dust.” She goes on to reveal the ugly devaluation of his life at the General Motors plant: “He flapped his wings over iron / cooling it from 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. / His talons sparkled as unbreakable / diamonds, while he waited for morning / on the twisted mouths of the tulips. / He was dragged / unconscious from the Plant, / the foreman shouting behind him / if he’s alive, he can come back to work.” The poem concludes:

I was there when my grandfather ruffled

the ash from his feathers,

reformed the crease in his fedora

and didn’t know yet

he’d be replaced by a machine.

In “Citizenship of the Owl at General Motors,” she writes, “The foreman insists / owls like the heat. No / need to ruin a white boy, / where the iron melts / men. Spilled, it beads like mercury / and burns through flesh.” Spilled iron burns through flesh, and the risk depends on one’s skin color. What a degrading measure of human worth.

While Rico’s mother worked at home, her father worked “second shift” (factory lingo for three to elevens) every day of week. He wanted his family to have the material comforts he didn’t. A noble act of generosity of self, love, and honor.

Yet, at home, her father was patriarchal. In “Domesticate,” a poem about being fed enchiladas, Rico talks about, “The way my mother made it— / serve my father first.”

Determined not to walk an inherited path of patriarchy, Rico draws a firm line to distinguish herself from the system. In “Feeding Rituals,” the poet stakes her territory:

Robins, unlike my grandmother,

return to México.

Instead, she divides

flour, egg wash,

and cornmeal into bowls.

Lemon cut

and Bless us

O Lord and these Thy gifts.

There is no way I will

pray to a man

or let him eat first.

In “Luxury,” Rico again sets the terms of her own life:

I know I am not supposed to like it,

alone at the table, peeling the chicken

skin off, and into my mouth. The crisp

salt, sting of hot sauce

stuck to fingers, and I am eating

the prettiest piece first. I served no one

and ate entirely with my hands.

In “Tomato & Lettuce,” Rico says, “. . . and I believe men / made work for women / invented tile, / starch, matrimony, / an ama de casa [housewife] / to chop the tomato.” In “Northern Cardinal,” Rico relates heartbreaking lines about her mother: “I know she’s unhappy. / At night, I steal money / from my father’s wallet and put it in her purse.”

The poem “Elegy for My Quinceañera” makes a similar assertion of independence in a way that is mischievous and funny. In many Latin American cultures, a quinceañera is a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, celebrated on a girl’s fifteenth birthday.

Rico’s opening stanza:

Over my mother’s dead body, I arrive

dressed in the traje de charro,

my father’s Gibson Les Paul strapped to my chest

with one red carnation behind my ear.

Over her mother’s dead body! We can imagine the conflict when Rico’s teenage self chooses to wear the traje de charro, a type of Mexican clothing based on the dress of the horseman, the charro. Not the horsewoman. Not the ama de casa. In these four simple lines, Rico paints for us with deft strokes her life’s act of rebellion, which encompasses her love for her culture, for her mother and father, and for the bold forging of her own identity.

Substantial, original, inquisitive, and expansive, Pinion also encompasses Rico’s passion for food and cooking, which led her to attend culinary school. Rico’s food imagery is physically sumptuous and mouth-watering: puffy taco dough, fevered oil, ribs dipped in sauce, the perfume of cilantro, buttered brussels sprouts, oyster of each thigh, one dozen eggs, and never enough chiles. Yum.

In the poem “Ferment,” she writes:

. . . the dough smelled ripe like beer

in those early mornings of baking school

the machines getting lost

in fold after fold, the ribbon arm of dough

flexible as a twist tie. It is the repetitive motion

that keeps you alive—sardines, a glass of champagne,

falling asleep at 3 PM after work in your whites

forgetting to dot the galaxy of raspberry spit

in Morse code across your sleeves.

Who would expect the “ribbon arm of dough flexible as a twist tie” or “the galaxy of raspberry spit”? Rico’s poetry often comes shyly around corners to reveal, surprise, refresh.

I live near Lake Michigan. Having spent much time trying to capture the essence of the mighty lake, I’m bowled over by this line from “Mexican in Michigan”: “Lake Michigan is saying something, she is throwing the veils of her dress, back and forth.”

Impressively, some of Pinion’s poems have been previously published in The Atlantic, The Nation, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, and featured on Major Jackson’s Podcast The Slowdown. It’s no wonder that Pinion won the Four Way Books 2021 Levis Prize in Poetry, selected by Kaveh Akbar.

The first stanza of the last poem in the collection, “Cortés Burning the Aviaries,” sums up the reading of Monica Rico’s book as a galaxy of satisfaction:

Last night, I let in all the birds.

I told my grandmother to stay awhile.

I said, stop disguising yourself as wind.

You are not the only one who can fly.

Indeed, Monica Rico’s brilliant poems allow readers to take flight with her. As she says in “American Crow,” “I fly when I want to / twig in mouth.”