Book Description: 

“These poems remake one's sense of what a poem can be. They exist at the intersection of memory and oblivion. They are the sip of boiling coffee that doesn't burn, the dregs of adventure at the bottom of the pot. They are the doctor that prescribes nothing but to whom one wants and needs to come back. A mode of expression that strives to correspond entirely with the poet's life as a man. All these phrases quote the poet's own phrases. These brilliant poems haunt me, alter my sense of what a poem can be. What a pleasure to quote this author.” —Frank Bidart. “For many days I have lived in the poems of Luis Muñoz, who writes of 'Everything that is of the order/ of transience and its knowledge,' of moments 'where the world is missing,' and it has been a vertiginous experience. He makes things do what things cannot. He is a curator of the fleeting, a poet of duration, and of desire that reaches all the way into the dreams of the beloved. We are in the presence again of a poet from Granada, in the new century, and it is as if memory breathes again 'in the bound parcels of the clouds.' Here is a poet who understands the unrepeatability of everything, our isolation, our communion with others, what moves and what resists, eros and the ineffable, and in these English versions he is just as good. He is brilliant.” —Carolyn Forché.

 

 

Author Bio: 

Curtis Bauer is the author of three poetry collections, most recently American Selfie (Barrow Street Press, 2019). He is also a translator of poetry and prose from the Spanish; his publications include the full-length poetry collections Image of Absence, by Jeannette L. Clariond (The Word Works Press, 2018), From Behind What Landscape, by Luis Muñoz (Vaso Roto Editions, 2015) and Eros Is More, by Juan Antonio González Iglesias (Alice James Books, 2014). He is the publisher and editor of Q Avenue Press Chapbooks and the Translations Editor for The Common. He is the Director of the Creative Writing Program and teaches Comparative Literature at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.