Blond Angels

About the Book

Blond Angels is the name of this book of poetry:  Blond, like the golden  plains and hills of California where it burst natural as time and nature’s fruit under a shiny sun in 1970s and '80s;  Angels, inspiring images and voices that gave flesh to these verses in English, Spanish, both;  Blond Angels, an author’s book of poems on many topics, crafted on the road along life’s flow.

In its preface, this book of English/Spanish poetry exhibits how it’s been perceived by the Mexican poet Humberto Murillo Díaz:

“A lo largo del texto literario se entrelazan, cadena milagrosa, el amor a los seres y las cosas, la soledad del hombre en su abandono, el dolor y la muerte.  Y así debe de ser porque al poeta, nada le es ajeno; la visión de este mundo que lo aterra, igualmente lo salva y lo sostiene a pesar de la víscera dolida.  Cuida en su corazón la mano amiga, el saludo colmado de esperanzas, la expresión amigable de un poema a las dos de la aurora.  Leer los versos del poeta-hermano, es volver al recato de la hora profunda, al místico silencio donde vibran las cuerdas musicales de la poesía inaudita, clara y definitiva, ésa donde no faltan ni sobran los aliños”.

About the Author

Ernesto Oregel —Mexican by birth and German by last name and ascendance— is presently a Visiting Professor at Salem State College, Massachusetts, where he has been teaching Spanish and Italian since 1998.  As an adolescent and teenager, he was exposed to English, Greek, Italian, Latin and, later on,  he advanced his learning them in college, including French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian —classical and modern languages: his second love—.

As a high-school and college learner, reading and translating Homer, Virgil, Dante, among many others, Ernesto strengthened his first love —poetry—, burst in his soul at the age of 14.  During his first four years of college at Instituto Filosófico Salesiano —Guadalajara City, Mexico— where he attended the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras and graduated in 1957,  Ernesto enlightened the form and spirit of his verses.

In January of 1960, after three years of teaching experience in Guadalajara, Saltillo, and Querétaro cities, Ernesto started his graduate and postgraduate last four years of college in his native country at Instituto Teológico Salesiano, near Mexico City, where his poetic creativity grew deeper and stronger, reaching new dimensions.

As a theology graduate student, Ernesto spent his summers, during these four years, majoring in Lengua y Literatura at Escuela Normal Superior F.E.P. in Mexico City in order to upgrade his Spanish language and obtain his teaching license.  His poetry here reached new higher dimensions.  One of his poems was awarded the first prize in a literary contest.  As a victor, he became more poetically energized and more ambitious.

Writing poetry was his first love.  Writing prose would be a friendly and helpful companion.  So Ernesto decided to take a curso práctico de periodismo y redacción por correspondencia from Escuela de Periodismo Carlos Septién García in Mexico City under the direction and instructorship of Vicente Leñero, a skillful writer and author.

It was during this time that Ernesto had also the opportunity to meet a few times with Alfonso Junco, a well-known Creole poet, historian, and prose writer, who advised and encouraged the young poet to keep reading and writing.

In 1968 Ernesto moved to California.  Here he first attended the University of Santa Clara, and obtained a master’s degree in teaching Spanish in 1973.  Soon after, he joined California State College, Sacramento (now University) where he obtained a master’s degree in English in 1976.  It was then when Ernesto’s poetry quietly matured and exploted with a new vitality in the 1980s while he was teaching Spanish and English at the high-school, community college, and university levels.  Poetry and prose readings with Sacramento well-known writers —José Montoya, Fausto Avendaño, Olivia Castellano, Humberto Murillo, among them— were often celebrated on campus and in private.  These were the creativity gardens  where this book of Ernesto’s poetry —Blond Angels— was born.

www.lrc.salemstate.edu/oregel