E.A. Mares latest book features poems about Spanish Civil War

Enrique Lamadrid says his good friend EA “Tony” Mares was obsessed with the Spanish Civil War all his life.

Mares’ obsession reached a posthumous literary climax in the recently published bilingual book Reflections through the Convex Mirror of Time/Reflexiones tras el Espejo Convexo del Tiempo. It is a collection of Mares’ poems commemorating that war, some of which have been published for the first time.

Mares continued to revise the poems in the years leading up to his death in 2015 at the age of 76, said Lamadrid, who wrote the book’s prologue. Mares was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico.

“It was probably Tony’s masterpiece,” he said. It combined Mares’ overlapping interests in politics, history and poetry.

Lamadrid believes that Mares had such a big heart that he was open to accepting all other ethnicities; he had Irish ancestry on his mother’s side.

“It angered him that some (Hispanic) writers were anti-Americano. He was always open to everyone,” he said. “He was a very compassionate person.”

Mares wrote the first paper on coyote consciousness, Lamadrid said. Coyote refers to a person of mixed Hispanic and Anglo-American descent.

And Mares, a leftist, accepted people whose political views he vigorously opposed or opposed.

Mares’s political outspokenness is evident in the bold, visceral language of many of the poems in this volume. To experience their emotional power, they should be read aloud.

One poem, “Couplets for the Spanish Civil War,” imagines a union of opponents:

You say kill the liberals / I say let ’em fight forever

You say kill the fascists / I say let these sad people live

They say kill the communists / I say let them plan and plan

You say kill the anarchists/I love the anarchists

You say kill the Republicans/I say let ’em talk and talk

You say kill the socialists/I say let them pursue their differences

I say let’s all go together / step into the sweetest dreams…

Mares was born in Albuquerque in 1938. The Spanish Civil War raged until 1939, ending in a Nationalist (Fascist) victory.

Lamadrid believes his long-time friend first heard about the war from the teacher-priests in the church of San Felipe de Neri in the old town. In Spanish exile, they ordered him to get on his knees to thank God for the great victory over the “Reds”.

Mares later studied at UNM with two exiled left-wing Spanish writers, novelist Ramón Sender and poet Angel González.

Mares’ doctoral thesis in history dealt with the international brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The brigades were battalions of volunteers from different countries who fought on the Republican side.

The poems in the second of the book’s four sections are dedicated to Federico García Lorca, perhaps the most famous Spanish poet to have fought in the Civil War. The fascists executed Lorca by firing squad.

Here are the opening lines of the Mares poem “In the Curved Light” which focuses on one member of this group:

Calm man, good shot. You said

The firing squad would drive you crazy.

Still, you shot Lorca. It was your job.

It was your duty as a good Catholic

Juan Jiménez Cascales,

As a good, obedient soldier. At least

You didn’t like your job. Good shot,

I hope you aimed well at Lorca,

mercifully ended his suffering.

In the foreword, written in 2013, Mares addresses the reason for the book: “For me, the Spanish Civil War of the last century, with its dramatic and intense qualities, is a convex mirror in which we can see ourselves as beings fighting civil war within ourselves .”