Category: Rolando Perez

By Rolando Pérez

In this second edition of Tea Ceremonies for Winter (Cool Grove Press, 2018) now also titled Chanoyu for Winter/Chanoyu para el invierno Rolando Pérez translates the poems originally written in English into Spanish, inviting Spanish-speaking readers to partake in these ceremonies. The term “translation” is used loosely here, for these are less translations than complementary versions of one another. Moreover, the poems here are inspired by haikus, tankas, and chōkas, without being constrained by them.

In Chanoyu for Winter / Chanoyu Para El Invierno, Rolando Pérez shapes language in the spirit of the Japanese tea ceremony. Between English and Spanish, between winter light and memory’s warmth, these poems honor the fragile beauty of what almost goes unnoticed—a woman ironing a white sheet, snow over grey waters, the hush after a quarrel. Rooted in Zen and the devotion to imperfection, Pérez reminds us that meaning is not declared but steeped, patiently, in the small rituals of daily life. To read this book is to sit quietly with a warm cup in hand, aware of how the simplest moments sustain us.

—Richard Blanco, 2013 Presidential Inaugural Poet, author of Homeland of My Body

In his latest books Rolando Pérez demonstrates once again his gift for blending intellectual rigor with lyrical grace. What makes this volume especially distinctive is its bilingual artistry: poems conceived in English are adapted by the author into Spanish, creating a dialogue across languages that enriches their meaning. Like the ritual of preparing tea, each piece unfolds with balance and poise, leaving the reader gratified and enlightened. 

—Gustavo Pérez Firmat, author of Pulitzer Prize nominated Next Year in Cuba

Chanoyu for Winter/Chanoyu para el invierno is a 2026 International Latino Book Award winner, honored with the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award in the Best Bilingual Poetry Book—One Author category.

This is the first volume of the quartet Chanoyu for the Seasons / Chanoyu para las estaciones. In this sense, the work participates in a larger multiplicity—a dialogue not only between languages but also between temporalities, perspectives, and ways of being.

by Rolando Pérez

Spring marks a transitional time between the greyness of winter and the brightness of summer. And in this way, this Chanoyu for Spring/Chanoyu para la primavera explores the complexity of our emotions. As Lawrence Durrell writes in Clea, the fourth and final volume of The Alexandria Quartet: “How is one to make clear a single truth about the human heart?”. The question itself exposes the paradox: it is not that we are duplicitous, but that we are multiple. Our inner lives, like Spring itself, are transitional, layered, and irreducible to a single tone.

We live, as the Chicana writer and philosopher Gloria Anzaldúa reminds us, in the space between borderlands—fronteras. This means inhabiting multiple languages simultaneously, as is the case here. It is not merely about translating words or even cultures, but rather about dwelling in those liminal spaces where life is often demanding and challenging. The world has little patience for ambiguity; it demands simple answers to life’s most intricate questions. And yet, Spring is that brief interval when, if all else is lost, what remains is Pandora’s enduring hope: the ephemeral cherry blossoms yet to bloom.

“Cha-no-yu,” the Japanese phrase for “hot water for tea,” encapsulates Japanese tea ceremony, the spirit of which Peréz evokes in his limpid yet sophisticated collection of poems… In Pérez’s poetic universe, every moment matters, whether it carries weight or both “meaning and non-meaning” at once… Through his poetry, Pérez asks: what is life beyond a moment, beyond “tea / held / by / a thin little string / and / silence”?

—Publishers Weekly

Chanoyu for Spring/Chanoyu para la primavera is the second volume of the quartet Chanoyu for the Seasons /Chanoyu para las estaciones.

by Rolando Pérez

This is a book composed of prose pieces and accompanying poems (mostly haiku and tanka). Bashō called this hybrid genre haibun. Like Bashō’s most famous work in that genre, Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Interior), Chanoyu for Summer / Chanoyu para el verano is a book about journeys: some physical and rooted in space, most of them internal.

For many children, summer is a special time of year: the end of school, playing outside beneath the warm rays of the sun, traveling, and so much more. Yet global warming has made summers increasingly inhospitable for everyone, especially for those who live in the most precarious parts of the world. In any case, with time our idealized notion of summer changes, as does the way we experience the season itself. Perhaps that is why the Japanese pay such close attention to the seasons. They are not merely climatic transitions, but embodied and transcendental experiences: surfaces as well as interiors.

As delicate yet durable as fine tea cups, the poems in Rolando Perez’s seasonal series offer quiet observation and reflection in the howling chaos of the modern world. The exquisite care with which he crafts them allows for surprising, delightful bursts of knowing. In Chanoyu for Summer they’re embedded like jewels in prose memories. Appropriately for the season, these are about coming and going – but also about the stillness between:

No frogs, no ripples.

And not even goldfish swim

beneath the water.

Listen. What do you feel?

—John Strausbaugh, author of Duchamp Takes New York

Chanoyu for Spring/Chanoyu para la primavera is the third volume of the quartet Chanoyu for the Seasons /Chanoyu para las estaciones.

by Rolando Pérez

Chanoyu for (the) Fall / Chanoyu para el otoño employs a variety of Japanese poetic forms to explore the interplay of light and darkness, presence and absence, shadows, subtlety, and the unsayable (yūgen). These forms allow the author to pursue a disciplined attention to thought and feeling (kokoro), revealing the depths hidden within ordinary experience.

At one level, this volume reflects on autumn and the quiet descent of leaves, light, and time. Yet because the English word fall signifies both a season and the act of falling, it inspired Rolando Pérez to create a work concerned not only with autumn but with the many kinds of falls (furu) that shape a human life—losses, transformations, endings, and renewals.

The result is a distinctly Western meditation composed in the minor key of yūgen, where what remains unspoken often carries the greatest resonance.

A sublime collection, moving, searching and profoundly alert to life’s endless challenges.  

—Junot Díaz, author of This Is How You Lose Her 

Chanoyu for (the) Fall / Chanoyu para el otoño (en caída) is the fourth and final volume of the quartet Chanoyu for the Seasons/Chanoyu para las estaciones.