cover image Not Go Away Is My Name

Not Go Away Is My Name

Alberto Ríos. Copper Canyon, $17 trade paper (96p) ISBN 978-1-55659-587-5

This striking 12th collection from Ríos (A Small Story About the Sky) draws its energy from the space between active resistance and sturdy persistence. “I will wait, said the wood, and it did,” begins one poem, while this patience is transformed into a more explicit political stance in another, from which the collection takes its title: “You win. You have always won./ All I can do is not go away.// Not go away is my name.” A vibrant attention to color animates even simple descriptions—the poem “A Quiet Evening in August” begins with the observation that “it is dusk. Earth eats the dragon./ The singed edges of sky orange// Fire in red smoke plumes everywhere,/ Lavender, finally, lavender and gray// The great bruise of the moment in the sky,/ Weak yellow smudges framing the end.” This work captures Ríos’s singular voice at its best. (Apr.)