Tonto & Destinata

55 new poems. TED BERNAL GUEVARA merges the adjective to noun, the noun to verb and the verb to adjective in his most eclectic book of poems to date. Rest assured, he is not demolishing the language, like most social venues these days, but rather upholding it to a higher standard. These fusions are most evident in the poem, "Adjectives Afloat," perhaps a pivot of all that is moveable in today's embattled issues. Five poems have previously appeared in other publications. Rattle editor Timothy Green says of the poem, "Trucks": "This was one of my favorite poems this week-one of five I've been re-reading over the last hour..." and with the same interim to the title "12 Words I Would Use in a Poem." A slew of titles is inspired from Guevara's travels to Central America, Athens, and Venice. His zeal to calm the turbulences of today can almost be measured by the length of the poem. However, he does not stray from the flow, poetry as it is meant to be. Irony, personification, metaphor, and rhythm are on the canvas always, fervently, gently mixed from the palette. Length softens in the poem-within-a-poem, "Destinata," a five-page rite of passage. (Back cover)