An Avocado Slowly Falling

Description

Abby Templeton-Greene’s poetry has been published in McSweeneys, Calyx Journal, RATTLE, Pilgrimage, The Wazee, The Mom Egg and several other journals. She has an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and was a finalist for the Blast Furnace Chapbook Contest and the Friends of the University of the Sciences Pennsylvania Writing Award. Other awards include the 2011 Lighthouse Writers Seven Deadly Sins Writing Contest as well as the 2012 Sixfold Writers Contest prize for poetry. Abby teaches Creative Writing at Florence Crittenton High School in Denver, Colorado where she lives with her three year old daughter and her loving husband who comes to all of her events and laughs at all of her jokes.

Ruth Warner Carrillo has worked as a professional translator and interpreter for nearly 35 years in Latin America and the United States. She loves languages, words, and the arts in general, and greatly admires her niece, Abigail T-G

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When you turn the first page of An Avocado Slowly Falling, be sure you brought your dancing shoes. Be ready to jump between languages, to Cumbia to sestinas and slide across the floor in a slow milonga, to fall in love with Manuela Cionci, a poet that never existed, and to exalt in the vibrant, energetic poetry of Abby Templeton-Greene.

Richard Garcia, Author of The Other Odyssey, The Chair and other books

Abby Templeton-Greene is a poet of people and places. Enriched with the beauty of two languages, An Avocado Slowly Falling carries the voices of her ancestors, both real and imagined, as well as the voices of the silenced, the despised, and the dead. This collection pays homage to her literary, linguistic, and cultural influences—Sandra Cisneros, Pablo Neruda, Fernando Pessoa, and Alfonsina Storni among them. Thus, we can learn a lot about these times from a poet like Abby Templeton-Greene who declares, “I do not want to believe/ the rumors of my generation.” With poems like hers, maybe we don’t have to either.

Lauren Schmidt, author of Two Black Eyes and a Patch of Hair Missing and other books

Abby Templeton-Greene’s poems seduce us in languages both familiar and unfamiliar. Her injection of Spanish is so seamless, even the monolingual reader will think herself to be as fluently bilingual as this spinner of songs and tales. Likewise, her fresh use of English and her ability to massage out of this language the sensuality of a romance language will make us think she is whispering the rolling hills and valleys of Spanish. Even with this luxurious imagery and rhythm, Abby is able to delve into subjects that are soul searching and haunting. The only thing better than reading Abby’s poetry is hearing her read it to you, allowing her words to become your own, the landscape shifting before your eyes.

Lisa Cheby, author of Love Lessons From Buffy the Vampire Slayer