PUERTA DEL SOL
select critical commentary:
“Puerta del Sol is not a book of fixed identity but a book of identity in flux. Its fundamental stance is that of exile, the person who is pulled between two ‘homes,’ neither of which is fully ‘his.’ García Lorca is one of the great heroes of the book, but no one really knows exactly where he has been buried: ‘And no one really knows exactly / where,’ writes Aragón, ‘—his final place (my italics)…’ Puerta del Sol is a beautiful, carefully written, deliberately, infinitely sad book; it is, in García Lorca’s phrase, ‘deep song’ (cante jondo).’
--Jack Foley, The Aslop Review “Yet there is also much joy in this book; Aragón often spends a poem simply reveling in a particular moment. In "Madrid in July" the speaker recalls one summer afternoon "stacking well into the afternoon / tablecloths and napkins" while working in a restaurant laundry, and his physical attraction for a co-worker: "the blood that thrives // whenever I glimpse / the hair on his wrist." Such sensual delights continue through poems like "Winter Socks" and "Lunch Break" and seem to culminate in the short rhyming poem "Mi Corazón is a Bilingual Mirror."
--Alexandra van de Kamp, Rain Taxi |
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select reviews of Puerta del Sol:
"Puerta del Sol, Francisco Aragón's first full-length book, is an intimate look at life in contemporary Spain as well as a convincing depiction of one person's attempts to navigate the overwhelming effects of loss and violence. "
-Alexandra van de Kamp, Rain Taxi | Read Full Review
-Alexandra van de Kamp, Rain Taxi | Read Full Review
"...Aragón doesn’t use the word “translation” because his “elaborations” from English to Spanish involved “rewriting, reordering, or re-creating specific lines.” The results are lyrically beautiful poems in both languages that shine through the many layers of personal and linguistic displacement and migration."
-Craig Santos Perez, Jacket 2 | Read Full Review
-Craig Santos Perez, Jacket 2 | Read Full Review