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United Left
Paperback
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Publisher: Eulalia Books
Pages: 88
Language: English
An ironic, intimate, and sometimes psychedelic book entwining the political history of the 1980s in Peru with the poet's autobiography.
English debut by Azerbaijani-born Peruvian poet Álvaro Lasso. Marked by dark, absurdist humor, these pop prose poems capture snippets from the poet's youth and publishing career while grappling with revolution, idealism, and the disintegration of the Leftist coalition Izquierda Unida in 1980s Peru.
The genre-defying pieces of Peruvian poet and publisher Alvaro Lasso's UNITED LEFT are thick, nimble surrealist missives, warm with nostalgia for a leftist utopia that never was. They take on a new life in English; Kelsi Vanada's translations are popping with movement and precision.--Katherine M. Hedeen, translator of Prepoems in Postspanish
Lasso's poems cut through the glamor and charm of belonging and belief with prose so spare neither author nor reader have anywhere to hide. Kelsi Vanada expertly renders this clarity into an English that knows exactly when to get out of the way so each prose poem can realize itself as a tiny piece of real estate, leaving the reader pitched vertiginously at the edge of our investments in ideology and with nowhere left to run.--Farid Matuk, author of The Real Horse: Poems
In Álvaro Lasso's UNITED LEFT, humor, absurdity, the political, and the personal echo into each other and then feedback, a parallel for the coming together and then disintegration of innocence and ideology.--Gabriel Dozal, author of The Border Simulator
When it comes to decapitations, I have only one thing to say: it's tough to learn to perfect a smile for the executioner. Like the best of Tomaz Salamun, these crackling, unruly prose poems by Álvaro Lasso confront our difficult human reality with a sometimes-bloodied and always absurd humor, laughing down the barrel of a gun. In Kelsi Vanada's deeply empathic, mesmerizing translation, UNITED LEFT doesn't simply sing but does something far more athletic and daring: these poems cartwheel and waltz on the page, they sweat joy, they cackle and conspire and run with knives in their teeth. What a rare gift to be able to spend time in their company.--Becka Mara McKay, author of The Little Book of No Consolation
Poetry. Latinx Studies.
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