Some of the Light gathers the first 25 years of Hernandez’s award-winning poetry, offering 28 new poems and a glimpse at the trajectory of a rising contemplative American author.
At its core, Some of the Light contains collected poems of love, told through the lens of a single father raising two children alone in the borderlands. They are at times intimate and confessional, ranging from personal relationships to spiritual inquiry, from human rights to the environment, while between the cracks of the poems are poetic contemplations, chronicling the passing days of the pandemic.
This latest work by Hernandez reveals a writer whom former US poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera calls “a titan—unafraid to take to the road, get his hands dirty, to fully immerse himself in the world of his subjects.”
Some of the Light is a part of Beacon Press’s Raised Voices poetry series, established in 2021 to raise historically excluded voices and perspectives, and to celebratepoetry’s ability to access truths in ways no other form can.
About the Series
Raised Voices is a poetry series established in 2021 to raise marginalized voices and perspectives, to publish poems that affirm progressive values and are accessible to a wide readership, and to celebrate poetry’s ability to access truth in a way that no other form can
Contents
SOME OF THE LIGHT
Endling
Refraction #1
Father of Clarity
A Basic Understanding
Refraction #2
Single Parent Soliloquy (& The Joy of Kites)
This City
Refraction #3
Self Portrait at 46
Time Capsule
Limerence
Unqualified Poem
Refraction #4
Settling
Sandalwood
Salvador
The Poet’s Return
Refraction #5
Hometown Ode
Ish
Tik Tok
Brown Lotus (A Performance)
Her Majesty’s Last Stand
Variations on This Land
Refraction #6
Sleepless Nights (Thich Nhat Hanh Is Dying)
A Grocery Store
The Talk (Talisman for Salvador)
NATURAL TAKEOVER OF SMALL THINGS
Home
Brown Christ
The Day Johnny Tapia Died on My Sidewalk
Undelivered Postcards to Lydia
San Joaquin Sutra
Natural Takeover of Small Things
Instructions for the Altar
Flying Parallel
My Name Is Hernandez
Adios, Fresno
CULTURE OF FLOW
Culture of Flow
How to Get to the San Joaquin River
SKIN TAX
Mama’s Boy
I Rub My Hands
I Arrive Late
I Pissed on Little Ricky
Perched on the Face
If I Could Tell You
Enter Madrugada
I’m Going to Put Virgil Down
When Young Andres
Acknowledgments
Publication Acknowledgments
About the Author
“What does it mean to refract and be a refraction of the world we inhabit? In Some of the Light, Tim Z. Hernandez reminds us that memory is only a confluence of our desires—to hold on—to rebuild from the intimacies of loss toward a reclamation of self. He cleaves open language—with all its gorgeous failures.” —Felicia Zamora, author of Quotient
“Some of the Light arrives to remind us that Hernandez has been turning over the stones, cradling them, and tumbling them in his mouth until he can taste and recite every fissure and form that must be sung. It awakens the inner light that empires, trials and tribulations, others, and even the self have attempted to extinguish and failed. Hernandez lets the light radiate, and we must follow.” —Anthony Cody, author of Borderland Apocrypha
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