Orinoco Plains (dancing girl press, 2025) by Lorraine Caputo
Comments By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson
In Orinoco Plains, Lorraine Caputo, the traveling troubadour, takes
readers on a magical musical tour through the Llanos of Venezuela in this entertaining and exhilarating poetry collection.
About the book:
With her latest collection of travel poetry, Orinoco Plains, Lorraine Caputo invites you on a journey through the Llanos of Venezuela. This region, traversed by the mighty Orinoco River, teems with wildlife. Roseate spoonbills and black ibis, caimans and iguanas, anteaters and capybara are just some of the fauna we shall see. And we will witness the lives of the people of these plains, celebrating feast days, dancing, playing music, going to school, traveling – and those displaced from their ancestral homes. Come and enjoy the adventure!
About the author:
Wandering troubadour Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear internationally in over 500 journals and 24 collections of poetry – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Santa Marta Ayres (Origami Poems Project, 2024). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. She is a Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honoree (2011), and multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth.
Some of my favorite poems:
LLANO VIGNETTES
I.
Black-crested, golden-throated large bird sits on a fence post.
Verdant pasture stretches to forest.
White egrets stroll amidst white cattle grazing.
II.
Three men stand mid-river.
Muddied waters hasten past muscular legs.
The middle hombre reaches to cast a net.
III.
White sun shielded by humid clouds. The water-logged land
is flat, flat to any horizon & dusted by white long-plumage flowers.
A flock of garzas swoops over these llanos.
IV.
Three men ride atop a load of sugar cane. The truck-wind whips
the dried blades & their shirts.
V.
Early afternoon, egrets fill the small-leaf trees edging a plowed field.
The come-again rainy season swells reborn swamps of lavender-spiked
flowers & lazy streams.
Perched atop un árbol, a hawk-sized bird, chestnut-colored body,
cream-colored head.
VI.
The two-lane highway slices across the thick landscape of thick woods,
thick pastures thick with zebu. Joropos play on the radio, we dance
around potholes.Trees & lakes thick with waterfowl – herons, scarlet ibis, storks.
VII.
Ay, how can I describe the beauty of this land when I
don’t know the names of the birds, the trees, the plants …?
VIII.
Beings quickly breach the dirty-mirror surface or duck beneath concentric
circles forming. In one lakelet, a babo, snout in air, slowly swims
towards a white heron.
IX.
But I can recognize the trees of civilization: mango, palm, banana, flamboyán …
& in the mist is a duo, a trio of houses
X.
Every now & again, in some stretch of the middle of this nowhere,
we come across a blue truck, a bus or yet another truck broken down.
XI.
Dragonflies dance in the now-mid-afternoon, across the road, around us.
A breeze ripples the water & grasses. The countless lagunillas with a solitary
or more babos. On one small island sun three, mouths open.
& this llano soil, bone-white, blood-red, engraved by these herds of cattle,
these flocks of birds & iguanas.
MANGO SUNSET
Mango sunset . . . . . full
moon arising high over
the llanos . . . . . balance
Mounting clouds veil la
Luna. The air vibrates with
the calls of toads &
cicada. Lightning pulses
profound indigo heavens.
Suddenly this world
stills. & then the breeze, stirring
the lance-shaped leaves of
those trees that tower like the
thunderheads. Heavy fruit sway.
& steadily the
rains slide throughout the night ‘til
pale mango sunrise.
SONATA FOR A LATE AFTERNOON
Narrow old-city streets lined with rainbow
houses. In the rooms of one, lilac-
colored, youth learn music. Boys tune their
guitars. A boy sits in the window
looking out to the cobbled street. Chords
of cuatro, bars of French horn, sweet
voices drift through the sultry late day.
GLIMPSING YOUR LIVES
In this port town built by foreign mining companies, not too far from the US-ranch-style former housing of their executives, behind strip mall stores displaying hundreds of styles of shoes, the latest fashions & electronics.
I glimpse your lives
as we speed by
In that treeless lot several dozen indigenous families live in shelters made of sapling posts, perhaps with walls of cloth, plastic sacks, cardboard, with roofs of tied-down plastic sheeting billowing in the wind of deep-grey clouds, with hard-packed dirt floors, with several net hammocks hanging, children resting, women breastfeeding, with clotheslines, stacks of firewood between each home, dark-skinned chamos playing, dogs & cats roaming, a man scraping a pot clean before putting it on the cook fire.
I glimpse your lives...
Out on the medians of broad boulevards, 1970s cars, SUVs racing rapidly past, your young daughters, young mothers, your abuelitas walk, hands outstretched for a few bolívares, fresh-flowered dresses brightening the grey day, the black pavement, the greyed air, thick feet planted into the rust-blood earth.
...as we speed by
You were driven many years ago from your delta lands dried up by the rerouting of the Orinoco to open shipping channels—Ay, where else could you go, except here, homeport of those mineral companies?
I glimpse...
The wind grows harsher, scurrying garbage around the fenced-off lot next door, a flash of thin white lightning, sharp thunder as dusk arrives, your sons rushing home.
...your lives
& when these daily rains come...
...as we...
& when the night comes...
...speed by
SONG TO THE ORINOCO
—multi-voice, sung chorus
Ever since I was a child I
have dreamed of mounting you &
sailing far away to the sea
on the slow-flowing waters
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
A muddy snake serpentining
almost fifteen-hundred miles
past high mountains, through dense jungles
& across the llano plains
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
I want to reach down & gather
your many bouldered islands
into a garland ‘round my neck
bronzéd by your humid sun
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
I want to drape myself with your
golden dry-season beaches
& with those verdant-fringed shores
of your many months of rain
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
We’ll watch caimans & piranhas,
the manatees swimming past
jaguars come to the water’s edge
& the birds flying o’erhead
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
Let us float the wide waters past
Caicara, through the narrows
of Angostura, down downstream
to dark River Caroní
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
Then into the many channels
lacing through fertile delta
lands until we reach the calm blue-
silver Caribbean Sea
Sail away
Sail away
Sail away
Ever since I was a child I
have dreamed of sailing with you
but the boats have long since ceased &
I will still have to dream of …
Sailing away
Sailing away
Sailing away
To Buy the Book:
https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/orinoco-plains-lorraine-caputo
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