antes que isla es volcán / before island is volcano
poemas / poems
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- £9.99
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- £9.99
Publisher Description
Gold Medal Winner of the Juan Felipe Herrera Award for Bilingual Poetry
From the National Book Award-nominated, Lambda Award-winning poet: a powerful, inventive new collection that looks to the future of Puerto Rico with love, rage, beauty, and hope
Raquel Salas Rivera’s star has risen swiftly in the poetry world, and this, his 6th book, promises to cement his status as one of the most important poets working today. In sharp, crystalline verses, written in both Spanish and English versions, antes que isla es volcán daringly imagines a decolonial Puerto Rico.
Salas Rivera unfurls series after series of poems that build in intensity: one that casts Puerto Rico as the island of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, another that imagines a multiverse of possibilities for Puerto Rico’s fate, a 3rd in which the poet demands his right to a future and its immediate distribution. The verses are rigorous and sophisticated, engaging with literary and political theory, yet are also hard-hitting, charismatic, and quotable (“won’t you be sorry? / won’t you wish you had a boss? / won’t you get restless / with all that freedom?”).
These poems tap unflinchingly into the explosive energy of the island, transforming it into protest, into spirit, into art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The emboldening tour de force from Rivera (Poems for the Nation) illuminates tyranny in his native Puerto Rico and reimagines a decolonized future. Rivera reproaches exploitation, entitlement, and bigotry as he calls for unity and perseverance. Though the subjects of these poems blossom from oppression, the poet does not lament: "we live under fascism.// ...you won't lose what you don't have.// we live on stolen time." In his most deceptively simple poem, he repeats "the independence of puerto rico," separating "the independence" from "puerto rico" through spacing and parentheses, gradually bringing the words closer, then eliminating independence to form the portmanteau puertorico, visually representing a transition toward unity and sovereignty. Cogent allusions and metaphors (including a discourse with Shakespeare's The Tempest) form vivid and memorable images. A master of aphorisms, his shortest poem is five words: "changing masters/ didn't free you." These poems of protest challenge the status quo in a cry for equity that brings Puerto Rico's heartbeat to the page.
