M. Miriam Herrera's unpublished manuscript of poetry, Kaddish for Columbus, explores the ambiguity of multiple identities—woman, childless woman, wife, poet, teacher, artist, painter, singer, explorer, nature lover, Chicana, Jew, Catholic, Native American—and also the disparate landscapes the poet inhabits: Midwest, Southwest, East Coast, Israel, California, Texas, Mexico.  The mythic borders among them appear in these poems as a metaphor for life that can also be found beyond physical space—the borders between peoples, ideas, religions, landscapes; between science and spirit, between self; how identities are transformed when the other side juts up against and collides with the old;  how the poet,  a descendant of both Columbus and Native Americans, reconciles ambiguity. Chicano life infuses these poems: The cuentos of childhood, like la llorona; the devil who visits the dance at a girl's quincienera; Mexican folk songs, like "El Venadito"; classical songs by Spanish composer of Andalusian flamenco and zarzuela, Manuel DeFalla; American folk songs such as "Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Sleep Kentucky Babe"; Chicano and crypto-Jewish rituals, such as mal ojo, susto, and espanto; American pop culture, such as suburbanites in Dodge Caravans, popsicles, Seventeen Magazine, Marilyn Monroe; the matriarchs and the patriarchs.  The natural world, too, abounds in these poems: earth, sky, stars, volcanoes.  The poet,  along with the sparrow, the owl, the cotton field, the avocado, natural life that cannot easily be classified, are all citizens of the world.  Each poem in this collection has its own musical bones:  The music of Spanish, English, Texas-twang, Hebrew, Nahuatl, bird-songs, the accordion, conjunto music, the Child Ballads, and popular music, infuse the back-beat and overt rhythms of the poems. In Kaddish for Columbus,  the explorer's footsteps in our world have created a new people with a type of odd beauty: "Skin, all at once the colors/of mountain snow, of river mud/and adobe." Columbus, the explorer, the original border-crosser, is redeemed because of the new humanity he has sparked.  What he started cannot be undone.  We are blending into one another, becoming one.