"Emplumada" door Lorna Di Cervantes

The poem "Emplumada" by Lorna Di Cervantes was included in a collection of the same name published in 1981 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The poem consists of 18 lines in three stanzas of unrhymed free verse.

As part of Cervantes’ first collection, Emplumada presents some of the poet’s main concerns, including class struggles, culture, and historical marginalization. At the beginning of the poem, the author draws the reader’s attention to flowers that, beautiful in their season, die at the end of summer. Next, the speaker notices stone fruits climbing over the fence line, and behind them, two hummingbirds joined in the air. The birds are united in their struggle to survive and to "find what’s good". As feathered creatures, they can find solace in flight and are free to fly away to be transported to another situation if the wind and their powers allow. The word "emplumada" translates as "feathered" and also "blooming of the pen", the latter emphasizing the liberating power of poetry.

Lorna Di Cervantes was born in San Francisco in 1954 to Mexican and Native American (Chumash) parents. In an attempt to protect their children from racism, the Cervantes parents allowed only English to be spoken in the house. This cultural divide would play a large part in Lorna’s poetry and activism as she explored the intersections, clashes and chasms between cultures, as well as gender and economic differences.

Cervantes got interested in poetry in the library where her brother worked. Early influences on Cervantes’ poetry were Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley and Keats. She first performed her poetry in front of a large audience when she was asked at the last minute to perform a reading with the Theater of the People of San José at the Quinto Festival de los Teatros Chicanos in Mexico City in 1974. Her work, The Refugee Ship, was later included in her award-winning debut compilation Emplumada (1981).

Cervantes’ other collections include From the Cables of Genocide: Poems of Love and Hunger (1991), DRIVE: The First Quartet (2006), Ciento: 100 Love Poems in 100 Words (2011), and Sueño: New Poems” (2013). She is the founder of Mango Magazine, a literary review that promoted the early work of authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Alberto Rios, Gary Soto, and many more. She also co-edited the cross-cultural literary magazine Red Dirt. Cervantes read a lot and performed her works. From 1988 to 2007 she served as Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder and lectured at the University of California at Berkeley from 2011 to 2012. In 2012, she participated in the Libroafikanty movement aimed at replacing books,

Awards include the Paterson Prize for Poetry, the Lyla Wallace Reader’s Digest Prize, the Latin Book Prize, two Pushcart Awards, two NEA Fellowships, the American Book Prize, and others.

The poem "Emplumada" by Lorna Di Cervantes begins with a picture of the end of summer - the withering flowers of sainfoin, once magnificent and full of bright colors, are now "withered". The reader is introduced to a third-person speaker in the first stanza of the poem, when the reader is told how "she hates to see" fading flowers, recalling their spring bloom and subsequent luminous existence.

She is still thinking about the time when "the weather was fine" when she notices the vines of a peach tree outside the fence. Her attention is drawn to two hummingbirds flying together. She notes the effort it took for them to soar in unison and collect nectar from what was available. She sees these birds as fighters who can use the wind and avoid fighting in flight. According to the speaker, in flight, feathered creatures can free themselves from the tyranny of the seasons.