Tomás Rivera’s The Searchers: Collected Poetry, edited by Julián Olivares, contains the twenty-six poems the late author published and an equal number which the editor discovered among the author’s literary papers. In The Searchers, in taut but impassioned lyrics, Tomás Rivera celebrates the common experience of humanity and renews his search for the encounter of the self, community, the past and the continuity of the dead through the living. Tomás Rivera is the author of the now classic Chicano novel … y no se lo tragó la tierra/… and the earth did not devour him and the short story collection The Harvest.
- Cover
- Title page
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Tomás Rivera: poet
- Introduction
- I
- Poetics
- The rooster crows en Iowa y en Texas
- De niño, de joven, de viejo
- Hide the old people
- Siempre el domingo
- Odio
- M´ijo no mira nada
- Me lo enterraron
- Seeds in the hour of seeds
- Young voices
- Perfection of perfections
- Always
- Another me
- This solitude
- The overalls
- Soundless words
- A most tired word
- Past possessions
- Run, puff, run, run
- Ennui
- Autumn and winter
- When love to be
- The child
- The eyes of a child
- Alone
- A Blas de Otero
- The searchers
- II
- Searching at Leal Middle School
- En la hora de las semillas
- Noon-night
- Las voces del olvido
- Do not forget me
- Nacimiento
- El despertar
- Awakening
- Palabras
- Estoy como estás
- La vida por fin empezó
- Finally life began
- To walk beyond the door
- Another day
- Not unlike the wind
- A flower
- Soy una palabra
- Fake or fink
- Eternity
- I go to church at "Veteran´s Place"
- Desátate
- From the past
- Through the window
- We didn´t bury him
- My life
- La luz
- Bibliography
- Chronology
- Notes to the poems
- Notes to the introduction