Poetic Voices Without Borders
Robert L. Giron
Writers Notes Magazine Book Award—Notable for Art - 2006.
Independent Publisher Book Award-Honorable Mention for Anthologies - 2006.
Honorable Mention-Eric Hoffer Award - 2006
"This eclectic collection, arranged in alphabetical order by poet, reveals styles and subject matter vary from the absurd to the insightful. In a world of informational white noise, throwaway music and stories, ephemeral art—a world where poets mostly speak among themselves—this might be one collection that gets the man on the street listening again.” –Writers Notes Magazine
"...The book is edgy with a literary inclusiveness that speaks to almost every reader, though the explicit language and/or sexual orientation of a few poets will offend some. A quick read of the biographies, however, may circumvent that problem....voice, clear and powerful, is the central element. Some voices are sweet and lyrical; others, deep and rich. Some smooth; others grate. Each voice is unique, yet together they create oneness even as they individually represent societal diversity....That every poem contains an admirable quality—even those I didn't warm up to—speaks to the poets' skills.
...Books of poems no longer sit on bedside tables, but they should. Traditionally designed for quiet moments when one has the luxury to see through other's eyes, poetry is too often consigned to classrooms and summer vacations. A poem, like a glass of wine, is a small indulgence one should afford more often, and Poetic Voices Without Borders offers a delightful first slip."
—Lucinda Farrokh, LareDOS: A Journal of the Borderlands, October 6, 2005.
Robert L. Giron
Robert L. Giron is the grandson of the late Casimiro E. (ès Monge) Giron, musician, composer, and conductor of his orchestra, and the great grandson of a pioneer of San Angelo, Texas, who ran his own stagecoach service between El Paso (formerly El Paso del Norte), San Angelo, and San Antonio before railroads arrived in West Texas. His family roots go back four centuries in what is now the USA. In addition to having Comanche and Mexican/Spanish roots on the maternal side of his family, he has paternal lineage to the houses of Spain (Osuna / Sevilla) and France (Lorraine). Giron holds a B.A. degree from the University of Texas at El Paso where he studied linguistics and foreign languages; he later did post graduate work in creative writing with José Antonio Villarreal, Jon Manchip White, and the late Raymond Carver. He also holds a master's from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and later studied comparative literature at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor under a Mellon Fellowship and has spent two summers at Selwyn College studying literature at the University of Cambridge International Summer Programme in Cambridge, England. Giron, a native of Nebraska, thinks of himself as a transplanted Texan who currently lives in Arlington, Virginia. He is the past coordinator of Honors Programs and teaches English, creative writing, and film and literature at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland. Trilingual, he writes in English, Spanish, and French.
