I Ask the Impossible
Poems
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An Anchor Books Original
Cherished for her passionate fiction and exuberant essays, the author hailed by Julia Alvarez as "una storyteller de primera," and by Barbara Kingsolver in The Los Angeles Times as "impossible to resist," returns to her first love—poetry—to reveal an unwavering commitment to social justice, and a fervent embrace of the sensual world.
With the poems in I Ask the Impossible, Castillo celebrates the strength that "is a woman buried deep in [her] heart." Whether memorializing real-life heroines who have risked their lives for humanity, spinning a lighthearted tale for her young son, or penning odes to mortals, gods, goddesses, Castillo's poems are eloquent and rich with insight. She shares over twelve years of poetic inspiration, from her days as a writer who "once wrote poems in a basement with no heat," through the tenderness of motherhood and bitterness of loss, to the strength of love itself, which can "make the impossible a simple act." Radiant with keen perception, wit, and urgency, sometimes erotic, often funny, this inspiring collection sounds the unmistakable voice of a "woman on fire" and "more worthy than stone."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The prolific novelist, poet, essayist and xicanista Castillo checked in most recently with My Daughter, My Son, The Eagle, The Dove: An Aztec Chant, an inspirational gift book, and Peel My Love Like an Onion, a first-person tale of immigration and reimagined selfhood. This fifth poetry collection displays all the energy and political commitment of Castillo's work in other genres, but holds few formal or conceptual surprises. Nevertheless, many readers will be happy to bask in their speaker's experiences and longings or to get angry and motivated by her cries for justice: "Women don't riot,/ not in maquilas in Malaysia, Mexico, or Korea..../ We don't storm through cities,/ take over the press, make a unified statement,/ once and for all: A third millennium call--from this day on no more, not me, not my daughter,/ not her daughter either." Over the course of 60 sometimes multilingual, mostly page-or-less monologues, Castillo's speaker brashly addresses the pope, celebrates Zapatista leader Comandante Ramona, eulogizes friend Dieter Herms, sits alone in a new city ("I have had PMS for three days./ If I drink myself into a stupor, who'll know?"), imagines being seduced by Nastassia Kinski and goes about her business with passion and dignity. The abundant erotic parables and mystical invocations work much less well, often filled with clich s and awkward cadences. But the point here is in the immediacy and the message; this book is worth its weight in a thousand arid ekphrases and aestheticizations.
