Candidates for Sainthood and Other Sinners

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. LGBT Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translations by Fernando de la Cruz. This collection of poems explores the thin line between saint and sinner. The poet asks the reader to consider, "Who is the saint here? Who is the sinner?" A few well-known people appear in poems as well as a few genuine saints, but mostly the poems explore the saints and sinners and everyday folks that we meet each day on the sidewalk, at work, the mall or on TV. The author...
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Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. LGBT Studies. Bilingual Edition. Translations by Fernando de la Cruz. This collection of poems explores the thin line between saint and sinner. The poet asks the reader to consider, "Who is the saint here? Who is the sinner?" A few well-known people appear in poems as well as a few genuine saints, but mostly the poems explore the saints and sinners and everyday folks that we meet each day on the sidewalk, at work, the mall or on TV. The author collaborated with Mexican poet Fernando de la Cruz in recasting the poems in Spanish. With Cellini's originals in English and in Spanish, de la Cruz created a third version. Sometimes these are faithful translations, but often they soar off the page and take on an identity of their own.

The poems are lean but, with a few pen strokes, Cellini creates sketches which suggest more than he writes. Impressions. Moments in time. Bits of humor. And de la Cruz has captured these same images in exquisite Spanish originals. The work as a whole, then, is a collaboration which will please readers of English, readers of Spanish, and bilingual readers will have a double delight.

"In CANDIDATES FOR SAINTHOOD AND OTHER SINNERS, Don Cellini cuts a spare and stunning path through a wilderness of sorrow; thus he allows us to follow him, witnessing what it means to be human in troubled times: we see Saint Peter in the moment he feels transformation is impossible. A Haitian woman forced to feed her children cakes made of earth. Matthew Shepherd at the moment of his death. These poems thus do far more than deliver us a serving of incredible and piercing beauty. They demand justice for poverty, violence, hunger, and spiritual bankruptcy. But they also hold up small justices and moments of faith and human connection, as if Cellini, a candidate himself, is saying: here, my gift to you. With startling clarity, Don Cellini sings—and sometimes whispers in a way that haunts the ear—an affirmation of the often hidden best efforts of people to remain human—that is, to act humanely, with compassion for others in the face of our own vulnerability and despite the pains and satisfactions, big and small, of being one human being on a small planet. In doing so, he offers himself as a guide and beauty and hope as twin salves to ease our way."—Josie Sigler

"We find ourselves with a book of poems that, in its two versions (English and Spanish), disturbs the soul with its luminosity, with the capacity that Don Cellini has to paint for his reader atmospheres, instances, moments that bring us amazement and contemplation, not to mention humor. He reinterprets stories and characters, but also creates new fictions, each unique, all of them surprising, knowing how to give them the perfect turn, the twist that traps the reader and introduces us to a world created by the poet."—Roxana Elvridge-Thomas