This poem first appeared in Delgado's 2019 book "Periodo Especial" (Aguadulce/La Impresora), which explores the socioeconomic mirror images between the Greater Antilles in light of Puerto Rico's ongoing financial crisis. Norysell Massanet, a friend of the poet, is an independent farmer and environmental activist (@laboticadelatierra) in Cabo Rojo, a town on the southwest coast of Puerto Rico's main island. Delgado's privileging of land rights and women-led environmental and agricultural initiatives is a significant departure from largely patriarchal and urban-centered histories of socially engaged Puerto Rican poetry.
Urayoán Noel on "Conversation with Norysell Massanet" |
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Agata Izabela Brewer: Turning to Poetry to Parse a Long History of Loss and Exile
"War is unreal until we feel the cold, precise metal cutting, as Zagajewski once had it, 'diligently, as in a child's cutout / along the dotted line of a roe deer or a swan.' From the fire and metal falling through the sky, the people of Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odessa hide—in subway tunnels, in basements, in cars along roads that can no longer guide them to safety."
via GUERNICA |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Chantal Neveu (Montreal) on EcoPoetry Now
"And when one takes last enough time, something can happen, an event, a sequence — unexpected. This phenomenon, without precedent, makes possible so much. To persist. Vibrate. Move. Resist. Founder. Transform. Separate. Shine — or not. In the breath of words are sounds, sensations, thoughts, meanings, objects, actions, passions, questions — random, rendered, phrased, fractals, ellipses, textualities, poems." |
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