Raw Materials * by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal * 89 pgs * $10.00 * Pygmy Forest Press * Leonard J. Cirino, Editor * 685 Ninth Street * Springfield, Oregon 97477

    Berriozabal's first collection is a long time coming, and long overdue.  But, it is well worth the wait.  You should be familiar with Berriozabal's work.  Many of his poems have appeared in remark. over the last few years, as well is as in countless other journals and magazines, in print and online.
    Raw Materials is a perfect bound book which consists of 78 poems, some of them poems written originally in Spanish and translated into English by the author.  The one thing all the poems in Raw Materials has in common is greatness.  Consistent greatness.
    Berriozabal is one of my favorite poets in the small press today, and his poems about mental health patients (culled from his job as a mental health worker) are powerful and surreal and unique.
    The first poem of the collection is my favorite.  Asimilación is a poem about Berriozabal's name and how he feels about it.  He describes how it was butchered when he moved here to America, how it was shortened, how it was changed to fit the new world he was in.  It's a beautiful poem about a boy from Mexico finding his place in America.
    Berriozabal is acutely tuned to his place and his surroundings; to his heritage and the suffering of his peoples.  In Sonnet For Columbus, Berriozabal challenges the view that Columbus did a good thing is finding the New World.  "Something about atrocities / Makes me want to tear down your statue".  He is passionate, and this passion (about poetry, about life, about truth) is what makes Berriozabal's poetry so good.  The poems ends, as all sonnets must, in a rhymed couplet: "Religion / Did away with the little that remained. / A paid holiday is all we gained."
    Raw Materials is a heft collection of poems, a wonderful introduction into Berriozabal's poetry - if you are ignorant of him - or an indispensable addition to your library.  And, for $10, how can you go wrong?


Reviewed by justin.barrett