Akrilica, a co-publishing venture between Noemi Press and Letras Latinas — the literary initiative at the Institute for Latino Studies at the University of Notre Dame — showcases innovative Latino writing. The series name recalls the groundbreaking, bilingual book from the eighties by distinguished Chicano writer, and United States Poet Laureate Emeritus, Juan Felipe Herrera.
Manuel Paul López creates a psychedelic hybrid collection that brings humor and pop art together through verse plays, micro fiction, and poems that engage in an ever-shifting reality.
Manuel Paul López's books include Nerve Curriculum (Futurepoem), These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press), winner of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press). He also co-edited three anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories: In the Time of Covid and Uprising (City Works Press), Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press) and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works Press), all three generated from a community-based writers' workshop of the same name that he's co-facilitated in Southeast San Diego. A CantoMundo fellow, his work has been published in Bilingual Review, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Hanging Loose, Huizache, New American Writing, Puerto del Sol, and The Rumpus, among others. López was also awarded a Creative Catalyst Fund grant from the San Diego Foundation. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College.
"López (The Yearning Feed), a sort of psychedelic stenographer, writes what feels like a puckish manifesto from inside a dream in this shape-shifting collection. 'To avoid bad luck hum the first verse of the greatest poem of all time,' he writes, 'though use discretion, because many will disagree with your choice and attempt to cut you.' Most of López's cross-genre work displays a storytelling quality, recalling jokes and anti-jokes, parables and anti-parables. Whether López is working through lyric poetry or playlist-fueled verse dramas (which comprise the majority of this volume) or prose experiments, each piece remains stealthily comic, with biting turns and bursts of imagination that recall such figures as Leonora Carrington and Gabriel García Márquez. Each piece slides on a fabulist tilt: a person comes to grips with possibly being a Muppet, a boy with an apple on his head dies of hunger, and 'the angel of Marlboro Smoke Road' emerges from 'its coral reef like a small, ornate necktie.' The greatest act of prestidigitation that López achieves is maintaining a big heart throughout his work: 'You're a real imagination. That's what your grandmother always said, a real imagination, mijito. Now keep stenographing your big heart away because the world needs to change with beauty in mind.' López's absorbing hybrid forms are full of humor, ingenuity, and sly politics." - Anonymous
"In his latest book, These Days of Candy, Manuel Paul López writes: 'I'm a mouth with your laughter trapped in me.' That laughter is streaked with 'tears,' 'dried fireflies,' 'blood,' and 'long inspired verses.' Walt Whitman may have contained multitudes, but López brings us 'The Warriors' (there are dozens of them, all memorable), 'Mouse Pad Becky,' 'Radio Mind,' 'Mr. Signal,' 'The Saddened Man,' and 'the superhero towel'– determined, defiant, and stunted individuals whose voices (the ones Mr. 'White' Whitman ignored) are shrill, sharp, sensuous, and snappy. They bounce us around the expanding universe of warehouses and vacation hideaways, as they burrow into our lives, persistent as worms. 'I am disoriented from the daily blood donations extorted from the body via black and white bloodmobiles.' Lopez's poems are 'a walking coagulant,' a 'One angel wheelbarrowed inflation,' and a 'Global Positioning System.' The only way to release the laughter is to read Lopez's testimonies, as necessary as the poisonous air that we have to breathe." - John Yau
