Over at Tarpaulin Sky:
Oh holy hell, this is good. These are texts (mostly poems) written by the Venezuelan poet, journalist, and screenwriter Miyó Vestrini between 1960 and 1990. I’ve slowed down my reading of Grenade in Mouth to maybe a line or two at a time as I want it to last as long as possible. I’m also skipping around a bit so that there will be poems I missed to discover later. I’m laying the ground for my next pass. Vestrini is amazing. How can she be so breezy and so intense? How can she sound like someone you know and nobody you’ve ever read? How can this be so much about her world and ours? Translators Anne Boyer and Cassandra Gillig, in their super sharp Introduction, say, “To translate Miyó Vestrini is like letting a deadly current pass through one’s body and hoping not to get hurt. To read Miyó Vestrini is much the same, and any introduction to her work must end with a warning: of course this is dangerous territory.” The work is, of course, as vital and energizing as it is deadly. It is wild and brilliant. Nobody should ask me to write another “What I’m Reading Now” column for a while because I will still be reading this.