The Country Between Us

Rating:
Summary: Forché sees evil & names it
Review: Forché's poems of El Salvador in the late '70s/early '80s, in the first half of this book, could as well be written about Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Chechnya, or any of another dozen places that are sites of contemporary atrocity. And the U.S.: where all of us, so many of us good people, yes, good people, live on the uppermost levels of a structure of corruption and shame, which we fail, in our stubborn blindness, to recognize: "...I go mad, for example, / in the Safeway, at the many heads / of lettuce, papayas and sugar, pineapples / and coffee, especially the coffee" ("Return," 19). Forché's purpose is not to give us the guilts, nor to turn us into evolutionaries, nor to congratulate herself as someone who is "aware," but to bring witness of objective conditions of evil in which we, as American citizens and consumers, participate.

Rating:
Summary: The Personal is Political without being partisan
Review: I've read someone dismiss and misread Carolyn Forché's second collection of poetry: that it's a partisan piece that took advantage of the situation in El Salvador in the 80s, that its politics won over its poetry. I'll admit that Forché's writing is political, but then any writing is. Coming from the very personal sphere of experience, Forché's pieces work on the tension of distance and territory that the persona(s) is/are put into, without coming off as sensational. She does not, as some people might think, exploit or exoticize the landscape. The Personal is Political without needing to be partisan and Forché handles this well, which is I guess, why a lot of people find this collection of hers most accessible. The favorite poem which is widely anthologized is the prose piece "The Colonel." But the best poem for me in the collection is still "For the Stranger".

Rating:
Summary: The Personal is Political without being partisan
Review: I've read someone dismiss and misread Carolyn Forché's second collection of poetry: that it's a partisan piece that took advantage of the situation in El Salvador in the 80s, that its politics won over its poetry. I'll admit that Forché's writing is political, but then any writing is. Coming from the very personal sphere of experience, Forché's pieces work on the tension of distance and territory that the persona(s) is/are put into, without coming off as sensational. She does not, as some people might think, exploit or exoticize the landscape. The Personal is Political without needing to be partisan and Forché handles this well, which is I guess, why a lot of people find this collection of hers most accessible. The favorite poem which is widely anthologized is the prose piece "The Colonel." But the best poem for me in the collection is still "For the Stranger".

Rating:
Summary: read and reread
Review: Stunning, deep, beautiful and nerve wracking. I've carried this book with me for weeks now, rereading poems and trying to memorize parts of them. There aren't enough stars in the sky to rate this book.

Rating:
Summary: read and reread
Review: Stunning, deep, beautiful and nerve wracking. I've carried this book with me for weeks now, rereading poems and trying to memorize parts of them. There aren't enough stars in the sky to rate this book.