Antonio Gamoneda
Translated from the Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen and Victor Rodríguez Núñez

Faked a face in the air (hunger and marble of Andalusian hospitals),
at the far end of silence to hear the handbell of the dying. He
would look at us and we would feel the bareness of existence.
Quickly opening all the doors and spilling the wine on the
daybreak ice. Later on to show us the empty bottles as he sobbed.






Each morning he placed steel and tears in the brooks and taught
the birds to sing the ire song: the clear brook for the sweetly
imbecilic daughter; the blue water for the hopeless woman,
smelling of vertigo and light, lonely in the sump amid white
flags, cold below the serge, and the eyelids now yellow with love.






Constant in the empty passion. The dogs sniffed his purity and
his hands cankered by the acids. At dawn, hidden amid the
white stockades, near death before the highways, he'd see the
shadows move into the snow, the mist boil in the deep city.






Shadows coming, damp animals breathing close to his face. He
saw the fat glow in the lavender and the sweetness black in the
earth cellars.

It was the feast: light and saffron in the white kitchens; distant,
beneath dusty garlands, faces in the carbide sadness

and his howling amid the music's remains.
 
from the book BOOK OF THE COLD / World Poetry Books
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"Book of the Cold" [Libro del frío] (1992) offers readers the greatest living Spanish poet at his most innovative and hermetic. Here, as one critic describes it, “words—even the most precise—have no fixed meaning.” This openness might seem like an impossibility for his translators. Still, we would pose the poetic qualities found here are actually quite appropriate for translation, for they question ideas of accuracy and authenticity; they contradict the idea that words say what they say and nothing more.

 Katherine M. Hedeen on "Snowkeeper"
Cover of Christopher Soto's debut book, Diaries of a Terrorist
"The Poetry of Revolt"

"Christopher Soto’s debut poetry collection, Diaries of a Terrorist, offers insights into the world of an abolitionist, poet, community organizer, sibling, lover, and friend who finds himself and his community constantly surveilled in Los Angeles, the carceral capital of the world. The end goal of this poetry collection is not a healed heart, but an end to chronic state violence."

via LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS
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Eric James Cruz on Gregory Orr's Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved

"There is a word that stands out to me now: dimensionality. It lives as hope in these poems, a much-needed balm in the face of our current social climate. Most breathtaking is the invitation Orr leaves for the reader: to keep seeking in the face of loss. These poems affirm to me that I exist in both sorrow and joy. I live in the tension of being both unmoored and tethered to the world."
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