America : Bilingual Edition

América an intense book of poetic witness and mines the tension between our best and our worst. Translated by acclaimed activist and writer Carolyn Forché Extremely relevant and current topic Bilingual presentation with Spanish originals and English translations Previously to coming to the US, Valverde was a foreign correspondent for Spain’s major paper, El Pais,covering war zones in the Balkans and the Middle East Necessary exploration of historical and current violence in America Valverde traveled the US as a witness, visiting many of the scenes of mass gun murders, including a visit to Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a day earlier Devin Patrick Kelley murdered 27 people. Valverde interviewed friends, families, survivors and wrote their story into his poems. Examines the rise of the alt-right Valverde visited America’s significant cultural sites, memorials and gravesites, He traveled Route 66, he visited prisons, Ellis Island, the various banks of the Mississippi and Whitman’s tomb. And his focus kept returning to crime scenes tied to our history of enslavement, poverty, addiction, and mass murder. Valverde’s most recent book, The Insistence of Harm was a bestseller in Spain Valverde is the Director of the International Festival of Poetry in Granada—one of the biggest literary festivals in Europe, and helps run the poetry house Valparaiso Ediciones, which publishes numerous US poets