Cat Ruiz

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Biographical note:  Cathy Ruiz has shared her work in presentation in Washington and California and in many print venues including three poetry anthologies. She was awarded the Native Writer’s Circle of the America’s First Book Award for Stirring up the Water. She is also a published travel essayist and a fiction writer. She has taught College English and Writing for twelve years and currently lives in Siskiyou County in northern California.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714056
ISBN:  9781844714056
Author:  Cat Ruiz
Title:  Stirring Up the Water
Series:  Earthworks
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  20-Dec-07
Extent:  132pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  8 mm
Weight:  198 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Stirring up the Water is a river of merging currents. In this award-winning first collection, the waters are at times stirred softly as though with the tips of the fingers, and at times harshly like an oar thrusting into the water’s depths. These poems address issues of ethnic identity, class, and love. They explore life’s injustices and dive into ages-old religious-spiritual questioning, casting their nets far across a philosophical sea. Ruiz “charts her stories” around the world from Australia to Canada to Spain, and lets herself “be carried by the current” of each place, “listening and learning” from them without intruding upon their sanctity. She contemplates the natural world by “living in the moment of bird wing and flight,” and by showing the ever-present “cycle of life, journey, death, then life again.” After exploring the tough and the gentle sides of human behaviour, she discovers the depth and purity at the core of human love. With these poetic waters we see that to live “at the edge” is no less bountiful than to live with a sense of normality and is often more conducive to seeing and knowing “the mystery.” Presented in freestyle verse and formal rhythms, Stirring up the Water is honest and forthright, at times simple and at times complex in vision. These waters offer channels of wisdom that are accessible to all seekers, poets and non-poets alike. Stirring up the Water won the First Book Award in Poetry from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.

Table of contents:
1. PEELED RED ONIONS
Peeled Red Onions
A Hawk Circled
Saturday Afternoon at the Fights
Uncle Ray Meant
The Calendars Were Still on April
Wish I Could Have Saved One
Piano Dreams
The Final Days of his Dream
I was Told I Have More Spanish Blood than I Wanted to Believe
Both Sides of the Border
II. SMOKE RISING
Smoke Rising
Soft Clicking Prayers
The Little Birds
What About the Boy?
One Year Ago, Guernica
The Way to Atocha
I am Thinking of the Snake River Canyon Again
Medicine Place
Latitude 20, Longitude 60
The Orcas’ Dance
Off Reservation Blues
Black Feathers
Under an Indian Blanket
Like a Lizard Blinking
How do you Wear Your Moccasins?
Ermine Cape on a Saturday Night
Two Foxes, a Rabbit and an Owl
III. SOARING
Soaring
Bobby Morris and I
A Rope, a Rock and Me Falling
A Kiss
What Happened to your Love Poems?
Fundamental Differences
Because I was Not Ready for Forever
A Man, a Woman and a Blackbird
I Feel your Essence
I Think You were Mistaken
Those Letters
The Eternal Magnet of the Kingfisher
IV. AT THE EDGE
From an Ancient Shard of Anasazi Pottery
At the Edge
Could it be a Hummingbird?
Copper Tracks
A Skin you Shed
How the Sea Breathes in the Morning
My Friends the Expatriates
Diamond Points
Coyote, the Trickster, Comes to the Zen Buddhist Monastery and I Realize his Buddha Nature
Mint Julep Paper Mache or the Labyrinth of the Swimming Pool
Why I Gave Jason B. an A on his Paper
Even Though He Called Sherman Alexie a Hack
A Certain Stand of Poplar Trees
On a Theme of a Hot Summer Day
Beneath Bare Feet
The Seagull Let a Mournful Call
Each Page
Arrow Shoot
Today the Salmon
V. THESE PLACES
In Winnipeg
A Black Ribbon Says
Lone Egret
Take No Stone with You
Warm Springs
Morning of Hard Rain
Sevilla, Espana
A Tiny Group of Catholic Faithful
With the Seasons
At a Gathering of Friends
First Day of Spring
In This Simple Shelter
I Imagine it to be Hot and Dusty in Southern Spain
They Return Home
Glossary

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Excerpt from book:  

Uncle Ray Meant

In our house
a vodka bottle on the kitchen counter
meant Uncle Ray was in town visiting
and that Dad, who rarely drank, would drop the reigns
for a few hours,
if we were lucky, a few days.

Uncle Ray meant we could climb
all over a ready lap,
hear nighttime laughter, and eavesdrop on stories
and jokes we’d repeat for days.
Uncle Ray was fresh smelling cologne, hair slicked back like Elvis,
evenly pressed slacks and a jacket to hang in whatever closet had room.
It was waking the next morning to deep snores on the
living room couch
or to sneaking a peak at a dormant man’s body
cast across the downstairs cot like a sail fanned out in the wind,
bare feet sticking out funny, black hair ruffled
above a wool blanket until Uncle Ray finally got up at noon.
It was Mum, all smiles, dropping bacon
on a breakfast plate
while Uncle Ray sat smoking
like some sort of renegade king.

In our house
a vodka bottle on the kitchen counter
meant Uncle Ray was in town, visiting,
and Uncle Ray always meant the punishment would slide
until the vodka was stored
and Uncle Ray hopped into his Chevrolet
leaving us clinging to the smell of his cologne
that wafted behind the retreat of his newly starched shirt.

Unpublished endorsement :  Cathy Ruiz is an astute and perceptive poet, endowed with an admirable facility with words, open to new awarenesses and experiences, all of which she quite ably converts into poetry of a high order.

Geary Hobson

Unpublished endorsement :  Cat Ruiz's poetry comes from many influences, many life times. From the hot, dusty streets of Southern Spain, the colorful blur of a Mexican town square, to the mystery of gurgling waters in the Pacific Northwest and the Buddhist meditative raptures she explores. She speaks authoritatively, sensuously, robustly, and yet, she sings with a beautiful tenderness and musical lyricism not found since Theodore Roethke. I am empowered by her skill and voice.

Koon Woon, author of The Truth in Rented Rooms (Kaya, NY, NY 1998); winner of the Pen Oakland Award; publisher, Goldfish Press.