by Patrick Fontes
FROM: Brooklyn & Boyle

In Mowing Leaves of Grass Matt Sedillo gives us something special. More than a book of poetry about a lived experience, more than a powerful insight into life as a Chicano growing up in the barrio, Sedillo combines a unique awareness of the Chicano experience, rooted in race and class, with an intellectual critique of American society and history. And the poet pulls no punches. We quickly learn from his verse that he is servant to no master; he is an iconoclast willing and ready to pull the curtain away from any Oz America might be shrouding in its past.

“And I didn’t come to make friends; And I didn’t come to hold hands; I came to talk shit,” Sedillo writes in the poem “Raise the Red Flag.” His honesty is not latent. We don’t need to muse over a cappuccino while wondering what his verse means—it is clear and often brutal.

If you know your ancient poetry, this is like Catullus calling out the poser poets in his time. Poems like these will likely cause some academics to squirm. Too honest? I don’t think so. We are living through a dangerous and pivotal moment in US history, where racism is in our faces and flat-out violent.

If Trump is a constant and unapologetic liar, we know that the untruths he spews arise from a warped sense of elitist entitlement and an unequivocal belief in white supremacy. We need historians and poets in our time to stand as a bulwark against lies and the historically latent fascism that now thrive in the open. In my estimation, Sedillo is at the vanguard, as both poet and historian. Whitman heralds “Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!” in his now classic Leaves of Grass with a poem titled “Poets to Come.” With Mowing Leaves of Grass, Sedillo assumes his rightful place among them. Read Rest of Review Here