Joan Logghe

Bilingual edition
—written in English
and translated into Spanish
by Claire Joysmith
and Arturo Salinas

Sofía

Poems

112 pages

6 x 8 inches

ISBN: 1-888809-11-6

$12.00

Joan Logghe’s series of thirty poems works like a small novel to reveal the life of an Hispanic woman with a Sephardic Jewish background. The hidden or “crypto” Jews of New Mexico were originally among those forced into exile at the time of the Spanish Inquisition and became early settlers in the Southwest. These poems “came” to the author, in the voice of persona over a period of fifteen years, from that place where inspiration and collective memory converge. The series draws on stories and lives of actual women, the author’s own life in the Española Valley, and is dedicated to the Goddess of Wisdom alive in every woman.

This book received a Money for Women/Barbara Deming Grant Memorial Fund grant for the translations into Spanish.

Sofía is a collection to be read as one reads a memoir of passions and sorrows, of convergences and heritages found in the art of reminiscing
and never allowing to forget.

—Marjorie Agosin

Sofía dances off these pages, with earthy songs, tears and prayers, a bride to life’s blessings and sorrows come to reawaken your heart. I love this book.

—Jack Kornfield

In the tradition of Neruda, Joan Logghe weaves the everyday stuff of life into shimmering garments of beauty. They are not one-size-fits all, and that is the measure of their wisdom, and yes, their longevity. —Jim Sagel

These remarkable, richly imagined poems bring to life the sprituality of the New Mexico landscape—in the wondrous odyssey of a woman, Sofía.

— Demetria Martinez