Edgar Garcia (Cantares) James Merrill Fellow Reading

Description

Bank Square Books and The James Merrill House present an author talk and reading with fellow, Edgar Garcia.

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About the Book

Poems and micro-essays intertwine in this poetically attuned adaptation of the mid-sixteenth century Nahuatl-language Cantares Mexicanos

Cantares is a multipart engagement with the poetics and history of the colonial and Indigenous Americas, oscillating between poetry and essay in a structure of repetitions derived from Mesoamerican poetics. Edgar Garcia reimagines the Cantares Mexicanos, a sixteenth-century anthology of Nahuatl songs from Central Mexico, and brings these songs to life not just as historical documents, but as music, to give presence of thought to their historical layers and complexities. His adaptations evoke the sound and texture of the sixteenth century, blending Indigenous and Baroque traditions, exploring themes of translation, adaptation, race, and historical memory. The collection moves between poetry and scholarship—between poems and micro-essays. The essays provide commentary and historical context about the colonial soundscape of Central Mexico. At the same time, the poems emphasize the songs' sonic, spiritual, and poetic dimensions.

The Cantares emerge from a time of cultural collision—after the arrival of the Castilians but still rooted in older, Indigenous worldviews. These songs are not nostalgic or idealized; they reflect crisis, survival, and creativity. Garcia's work draws inspiration from the Popol Vuh, the K'iche' Maya creation story, which begins in colonial darkness and still insists on the possibility of light. Through these adaptations, Cantares becomes a meditation on history, imagination, and the power of art to endure and create in the face of loss.

About the Author

Edgar Garcia is a poet and scholar of the hemispheric cultures of the Americas. He is the author of Skins of Columbus: A Dream Ethnography (Fence Books, 2019); Signs of the Americas: A Poetics of Pictography, Hieroglyphs, and Khipu (University of Chicago Press, 2020); Infinite Regress (collaborative work with Eamon Ore-Giron, Bom Dia Books, 2021); Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2022); and Cantares (Wesleyan University Press, 2026). He is faculty in the department of English at the University of Chicago where he is also affiliated with the Program in Creative Writing.