As someone who doesn’t know much about poetry analysis and thus was intimated in writing this reflection, it was surprising how intuitive, yet manicured Ak’abal’s poems were once I learnt the vocabulary explaining all his intentionality.

Both poetry sections “To the Hills” and “500 years” offer vibrant and personal accounts of what it means to be Maya forAk’abal. However, while his poems are very personal, I felt they were heavily relational in the ways Ak’abal shares his experiences through use of pronoun, welcoming narrations, metaphor, and personalization’s.

In class relationality continues to emerge as a key discussion theme as it intertwines itself within all the processes of culture creation, evolution, and preservation. As well, due to the importance of orality in indigenous Mesoamerican communications, relationality is evermore necessary for the survival of these cultures.

Ak’abal’s tone in “To the Hills” is mostly engaging and welcoming. Frequently he engages the reader with lines such as “Let’s walk, come in… Our feet Covered with mud there’s no greater reverence!” seen in the first poem Corn Harvest, Ak’abal immediately establishes a close and guiding relationship. Once closeness is established, Ak’abal uses very decorated and sensory descriptions to emerge the reader in his poetic paintings of landscapes, relationships and important figures such as animals or maize guardians.

As well, his metaphors were incredibly effective portraying his experiences with poverty, colonization and mental fatigue in the 500 years section. Using personalization’s of the serpents to represent colonial/Christian authority in the poem Paradise was especially shocking for how simply, yet effectively I felt it discussed the tensions between settler and Maya onto-epistemologies.

It was important to me to engage with the poems first as someone who hasn’t learnt anything about Maya culture and secondly as someone who can connect references to cosmology or themes of cyclicity, relationality, temporality, and histories of colonization. Both reads only confirmed the introductions acknowledgement of Ak’abal’s ability to appeal to various groups. Reading while limiting background knowledge was just as engaging and emotional as well as informational, as reading while embracing course teachings.