Soft Chaos
Alma Luz Villanueva is a poet, novelist, essayist, and writer of short fiction. She is the another of six previous collections of poetry, including Planet with Mother May I? (1993), hailed as “a rich and magical dream book…[by] a major American poet in her prime” (Kalliope). Villanueva is also the author of three novels and collection of short fiction: The Ultraviolet Sky (1998), winner of an American Book Award; Naked Ladies (1994), a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award winner; the critically praised Luna’s California Poppies (2002); and Weeping Woman: La Llorona and Other Stories (1994).
The poems in Soft Chaos embrace a wide variety of experiences - womanhood, motherhood, affection for the earth and animals, the author’s love of the Native American way of life, and concern for the future of the planet. Alma Luz Villanueva’s poetry fuses the personal and the political, expressing the sensual world in abstract terms and revealing a belief in the power of words to connect us to the world, to each other, and to ourselves.