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Gary L. Brower

who holds a B.A. degree from Drury University in Spanish & History, M.A. & Ph.D. degrees in Romance Languages & Literatures from the University of Missouri at Columbia, has taught at Baker University (Ks.), Rogue Community College (Or.), University of Kansas, University of New Mexico, University of Southern California, University of California at Los Angeles, University of California at San Diego (visiting), as well as directing academic programs in Barcelona & Madrid, Spain, and Guadalajara, Mexico. A specialist in Hispanic Literature, especially of Latin America, he has published numerous essays in Spanish and English on writers such as Angel Gonzalez, Octavio Paz, Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo, Juan Carlos Onetti, Manoel Bandeira, Ernesto Sabato, Ezequiel Martinez Estrada & others, in various academic journals. He has also written two books on the impact of Japanese haiku on western poetry: The Haiku in Spanish American Poetry (Ann Arbor, University Micro) & An Annotated Bibliography of Haiku In Western Languages (with D. W. Foster), (Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow Press). An associate editor of American Haiku magazine in its heydey, he also translated poems of Angel Gonzalez & Pablo Neruda.

And he has worked as a journalist in the English-language press of Los Angeles, including the positions of news editor & managing editor of a daily newspaper. In addition: he has worked with the southern Oregon Mexican migrant farmworker community, producing & directing a monthly Spanish-language PBS-TV program, “Quinto Sol”, (KSYS-TV, Medford, Or.), an ESL Outreach Program (Rogue River Community College) to migrant camps, the Jackson County (Or.) Hispanic Library Access Program & editing a weekly Spanish-language newspaper, which he founded, El Noticiero. He has worked with the Oregon Committee for the Humanities (Hispanic film program) & received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Carpenter Foundation, Del Amo Foundation, Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation & various universities.

His poetry (& translations from Hispanic poetry) have been published in magazines such as Puerto del Sol, The Poetry Bag, Put Poems, Tansy, Sagitario, Cottonwood Review, New America, Ann Arbor Review, New Mexico Magazine, Mundus Artium, 10.5 Arts Magazine, The Signpost, Ke5tra, Beatlick Poetry & Art News, The Rag, Sin Fronteras, The Peace of the Night (chapbook anthology), Saintvituspress.com, In Darkness, Memory (chapbook anthology), saintelizabethstreet.org, Sage Trail, Lunarosity.com & Central Avenue. He is currently one of the organizers of the Duende Poetry Series of Placitas and a chapbook, Planting Trees in Terra Incognita (Albuquerque, Destructible Heart Press) was issued in 2006. Another, The Book of Knots, (also Destructible Heart Press), was issued in 2007, as well as a broadside (with photographer David Cramer) “For the Wild Horses of Placitas,” a photo-poem, (June, 2007) & a CD-Gary Brower Reads (Vox Audio, 2008). He has read widely with guitarist El Nino David & dancer Susannah Garrett at such venues as the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque (Homenaje al poeta Angel Gonzalez), the Sunflower Festival in Mountainair, Duende Poetry Series, etc., & on CDs “A Tribute to Federico Garcia Lorca” (Vox Audio, 2007), “Duende & Friends read in Placitas” (Vox Audio, 2006). He has also taught classes on Hispanic literature for the Oasis program in Albuquerque. Born in Kansas City, Mo., he now lives in Placitas, NM.

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Gary Brower’s books can be purchased here…

some related articles are listed below:

1. gary brower | chet CHET   (For Chet Baker,1929-1988) “Did it cry till it became all voice? –Cicada shell.” —Basho Definitely a funny valentine, Chesney, later Chet, played the various instruments of his life till he could no longer separate heroin from music, vice from versa. Did the clear-voiced trumpet or fluegel float in the air-flow through his lips from the liquidity of smack, did he smack his lips with jazz, smack his life upside the heart, did his beautiful sound cause the fall from his Amsterdam hotel room window only two stories up, smack dab in the middle of the pavement? Was...
2. gary brower | mahalia MAHALIA (For Mahalia Jackson, 1911-1972) Her voice wells up in the history of her skin like acupuncture from inside out, dramatizes in the theatre of her face, spirals to the top of her hair piled up like a tower, extends from fingertips of her outstretched hands, builds a palace of sound like the biblical temple of a prophet from the Land of Emotional Goshen whose secret name is known by whoever hears her sing, reverberates with the shaking gospel of her body when she lets her voice escape like Hebrew slaves of Pharoah, a wall of water on either...
3. gary brower | django DJANGO (For Django Reinhardt 1910-1953) All roads of le jazz hot lead to this Roma, raising the question of how many fingers it takes to play guitar, or eyes, as he couldn’t read music, barely words, and not many but he could strum the blood, kickstart the heart, with Grapelli’s see-saw on the strings,far from gypsy stereotypes of a hundred weeping Hungarian violins, instead putting you on the Hot Lick Express where the click on the rails is a furious picking of strings, the band machine rolling along, bridging the riffs, sometimes almost over the clef, as gypsy as...
4. gary brower | ella and joe in westwood ELLA AND JOE IN WESTWOOD Alone on stage: Ella and Joe, guitar and voice, pick and pitch, rhythm and song. Joe’s hands: Fingertip-toeing down the strings, digits like tightrope aerialists balanced on vibrato chords. Ella’s voice: Acrobatic notes swinging in the air, somersault scats, grabbing the bebop trapeze, jazz riffs, sound-glyphs. The dead still make music. Ella with her big, thick glasses, Joe’s balding pate, half-pick strum, feeling my front-row seat still warm from years ago, the audience ascending like a cloud in musical sky as a voice travels up the string asking How high the moon? *For Ella...
5. gary brower | chasin’ the trane CHASIN’ THE TRANE (For J. C., 1926-67) The Belgian Adolph Sax invented his horn in the century railways invented a new speed though at first both were called the Devil’s Instrument– women forbidden to ride or play but in the century of jazz triumphant the sax picked up speed too and Trane put his rolling stock on the jazz rails purging his mind through the slim reed– shoveling notes into the hot box up and down the tonal railway Trane blew the sax blew your mind blew up the music and made a line of notes out of structure– free...