I’ve been eager to read (and review) this new one from Jose Hernandez Diaz, and The Parachutist does not disappoint. Jose has such a clear, crisp accessibility while also weaving personal histories and abstract storytelling, and this collection’s variety of tones kept me interested the whole way through without any lag or loss of the collective thread that sometimes happens in full length poetry collections. I’m getting to a point where I almost enjoy chapbooks more than full-length books because they can hold on to a throughline a little easier, but the way this book is broken into clearly delineated yet still connected sections helped make reading this an absolute breeze.
The earlier poems feel a little more connected to the writer and his relationships with his family and past, and I really enjoyed the poems about his parents. The poems express the varying realities experienced between generations, as well as the unrealities we tell ourselves as a matter of pride, the psychological ravines that separate us. But there’s a loving respect as well, an admiration for all his parents and loved ones have endured, histories passed down through layered interpretation and means of conveyance. I love the easy, conversational tone, like the poems are little chats between writer and reader over lunch—simple, thoughtful, and worthy of the investment of time.
And I’ll be honest, the book made me hungry too. I grew up eating a lot of Tex-Mex in south Texas and, yeah, some of these poems made me pine for fresh tortillas and even the most humble of homemade tamales.
The Border, for me, might be the best poem I’ve read that simply outlines the hypocrisy of American disdain or indifference for the lives of immigrants (documented or otherwise) set against America’s desire for cheap labor and services they can take advantage of. The poems in the second section do a great job exploring the similarities and differences between the unrecognized value of hard labor and the unrecognized value of artistic endeavors, with the pivot point between these two appearing in an amusing yet thoughtful poem about bathroom graffiti. These modern moments of juxtaposition were apt and well executed.
The collections later series of poems delve deeper into absurdist and imaginative vignettes about “a man in a Pink Floyd shirt”, encounters with anthropomorphic animals, and transfiguring experiences that are Kafkaesque both in their physicality and in the way they explore the strange officiousness of human systems all around us. Kafka himself is even referenced, as was Picasso, which was ironic as I had just, a poem or two before, thought about how these poems felt like little Picasso paintings, brief surreal realities that both laugh at and embrace life’s strangeness.
If you haven’t read Jose Hernandez Diaz, this is one I’d highly recommend. He’s one of the most thoughtful, amusing, and talented poets we have right now and I’m excited to see where he goes in future collections.
Look for it here: https://sundress-publications.square.site/
review by James H Duncan
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