Scan barcode
outcolder's review
5.0
Some of the subject matter is very dramatic but that's not why I loved it. I don't have a fancy poetry-analysis vocabulary to explain well what I liked, but I could read these over and over. Some of the poems about Detroit and Eastern Europe put me back in the 1980s, like a classier take on the stuff in Tom Waits Raindogs. You know, train stations, drinking, a proletarian "aw screw it, anyway." But that ain't it either, there's more to it, there's also that kind of nostalgia and that hint that some of the brief human connections might be part of something bigger, solidarity might be the word. I hope that doesn't come across insulting or something, comparing this to Raindogs, but just mean the feeling and the themes. The "In Salvador" poems are harrowing and beautiful which is quite a trick, and the feelings are desperate and real. There is a quote from Jacobo Timerman on the back where he compares her to Neruda. I liked this better than Neruda. I don't really like Neruda, even in Spanish. I think he's obnoxious. Forché is much stronger and I guess closer to my experience, well, I guess there are fewer countries between us but there are still a few.
htoo's review
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
fast-paced
3.0
I like that most of the poems were dedicated to other people (who I assume are friends or loved ones). To be honest, I read this collection for “The Colonel” which was my introduction to Forché. This was an okay collection overall. I just think there’s too much trauma porn in some of the poems.
casparb's review
i'd describe as a book u need a hug after, I'd read a few of these - 'The Colonel' and 'As Children Together' in separate settings & they're incred poems... I hadn't expected the rest of the book to manage that weight, the calibre. I have a lot of love for 'The Stranger'. easily one of the best collections of the 80s
leeleeski's review
4.0
A great book of poetry dealing with topics such as the military dictatorship in El Salvador, wanderlust and romance
seventhswan's review
dark
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.75
"It is not your right to feel powerless. Better people than you were powerless." (Return)
I had read a few of these poems before, in isolation - The Colonel is one that got me into reading poetry as a teenager. However, approaching this whole collection from beginning to end was a whole different experience, especially having read Forché's prose memoir, What You Have Heard Is True. Everything I said about that book also applies to the section of this collection that deals with El Salvador - this is visceral, uncomfortable, vital writing on a topic far too few people know anything about.
"I could take my heart, he said, and give it to a campesino and he would cut it up and give it back: you can't eat heart in those four dark chambers where a man can be kept years." (Because One Is Always Forgotten)
The other two sections of this book are looser in setting and time period, moving across Europe and the US and occasionally other areas at war. I'm very fortunate not to relate personally to most of what Forché writes about, but over a decade after I first discovered it, I still can't read the final lines of For The Stranger without tearing up:
"...until there are no more cities and you pull me toward you, sliding your hands into my coat, telling me your name over and over, hurrying your mouth into mine. We have, each of us, nothing. We will give it to each other."
I had read a few of these poems before, in isolation - The Colonel is one that got me into reading poetry as a teenager. However, approaching this whole collection from beginning to end was a whole different experience, especially having read Forché's prose memoir, What You Have Heard Is True. Everything I said about that book also applies to the section of this collection that deals with El Salvador - this is visceral, uncomfortable, vital writing on a topic far too few people know anything about.
"I could take my heart, he said, and give it to a campesino and he would cut it up and give it back: you can't eat heart in those four dark chambers where a man can be kept years." (Because One Is Always Forgotten)
The other two sections of this book are looser in setting and time period, moving across Europe and the US and occasionally other areas at war. I'm very fortunate not to relate personally to most of what Forché writes about, but over a decade after I first discovered it, I still can't read the final lines of For The Stranger without tearing up:
"...until there are no more cities and you pull me toward you, sliding your hands into my coat, telling me your name over and over, hurrying your mouth into mine. We have, each of us, nothing. We will give it to each other."
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture and War
nolemdaer's review against another edition
Excellent but too troubling for me to really resonate with it
conorsweetman's review
3.0
"You unwrap your dark bread
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm."
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm."