Bound Together: A Review of Aaron Shurin’s Unbound: A Book of AIDS
by Sam Moore I We’re holding hands at Golden Gate Park. Their jacket is thicker than mine, and they’re wearing my gloves; a Californian through and through, this clear, brisk day at the dawn of winter is too cold for them. I feel them squeezing my hand, lightly tugging me a step or so back,…
On Intelligence: A Quickfire Memory of Pedro Pietri
by Guillermo Rebollo Gil The 1977 bilingual edition of famed Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri’s work, Obituario Puertorriqueño, published by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture in San Juan, was meant to offer island readers the definitive versions of his most important poems to date. In the prologue, translator Alfredo Matilla laments how previous publications, including…
Digging an Open Pit: A Review of Jose Antonio Villarán’s Open Pit
by Omar Pimienta Reading open pit was a complex process for me. Before reading it, I had approached the orality of the text through various public readings of the manuscript, and these had triggered in me the need to understand how Villarán was going to resolve conceptually and formally, in a book, all those threads…
Noche Sin Amanecer: A Review of Ennio Moltedo’s Night
by Coco Sofia Fitterman At what time must the birds lined up in gardens, trees, and cages sing? Look to the law. 17 Thus begins Night, a collection of 113 prose poems written during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile. Appearing in English for the first time in a beautifully attentive translation by Marguerite Feitlowitz, Night…
A Review of The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas
by David Grundy Ably edited by scholars Aldon Nielsen—Thomas’ friend and literary executor—and Laura Vrana, The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas is a much-needed volume. It collects all of Thomas’ in- and out-of-print collections—Chances are Few (1979), The Bathers (1981), Sound Science (1978), and Dancing on Main Street (2004)—along with his contribution to the anthology…
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