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Longlisted for the 2023 PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation.
THE RUST OF HISTORY presents the selected poems of Puerto Rican writer Sotero Rivera Avilés (1933-1994), translated from Spanish by the poet's grandson, the writer Raquel Salas Rivera. Lyrical, close, and resistant to the ease of closure, these poems cut across time to create a potent poetry of place. Rooted and exploratory, bound to anti-imperialism, the poems unfold and keep unfolding how to live for and against home.
This work is massive in its scope. Sotero Rivera Avilés writes about being a post-war veteran, he demystifies archetypes, he speaks openly about his disabilities, he complicates narratives of education, and leaves a record of regionalisms from a world that no longer exists. The resulting body of work illuminates how revisiting loss can be a means of remembering.
About translating the work, Raquel Salas Rivera writes: "My hope, since I undertook this work, has been to lean into my obsession with Sotero Rivera Avilés' life and accept my desire to see myself, my queerness, and my transness in his successful and failed attempts at upholding societal expectations … We can't spend our lives living under the shadows of our elders. Other things must be remembered if we are to reimagine the futures we inherit."
Poetry. Translation. Latinx Studies. LGBTQ+ Studies.
