What do you think?
Rate this book
Yale Series of Younger Poets
Slow Lightning (Volume 106)
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Poetry (2012)Eduardo C. Corral is the 2011 recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets award, joining such distinguished previous winners as Adrienne Rich, W. S. Merwin, and John Ashbery. Corral is the first Latino poet to win the competition.
Seamlessly braiding English and Spanish, Corral's poems hurtle across literary and linguistic borders toward a lyricism that slows down experience. He employs a range of forms and phrasing, bringing the vivid particulars of his experiences as a Chicano and gay man to the page. Although Corral's topics are decidedly sobering, contest judge Carl Phillips observes, "one of the more surprising possibilities offered in these poems is joy."
From "Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso"
I'm a cowboy
riding bareback
My soul is
whirling
above my head like a lasso.
My right hand
a pistol. My left
automatic. I'm knocking
on every door.
I'm coming on strong . . .
Seamlessly braiding English and Spanish, Corral's poems hurtle across literary and linguistic borders toward a lyricism that slows down experience. He employs a range of forms and phrasing, bringing the vivid particulars of his experiences as a Chicano and gay man to the page. Although Corral's topics are decidedly sobering, contest judge Carl Phillips observes, "one of the more surprising possibilities offered in these poems is joy."
From "Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso"
I'm a cowboy
riding bareback
My soul is
whirling
above my head like a lasso.
My right hand
a pistol. My left
automatic. I'm knocking
on every door.
I'm coming on strong . . .
96 pages, Paperback
First published April 3, 2012
22 people are currently reading
3064 people want to read
About the author
Eduardo C. Corral
4 books97 followersEduardo C. Corral is an American poet and MFA Assistant Professor in the Department of English at NC State University.
He is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2012, Beloit Poetry Journal, Huizache, Jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West.
His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry, and writing residencies to the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.
He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University.
Slow Lightning, his first book of poems, was selected by Carl Phillips as the 2011 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His 2020 work, guillotine, was awarded the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.
He is a CantoMundo fellow. He holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2012, Beloit Poetry Journal, Huizache, Jubilat, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and Quarterly West.
His work has been honored with a "Discovery"/The Nation Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry, and writing residencies to the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.
He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University.
Slow Lightning, his first book of poems, was selected by Carl Phillips as the 2011 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. His 2020 work, guillotine, was awarded the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for gay poetry and was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
Read
June 13, 2016"I have to sit down to say this. Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn't love him. Not because he was a beast or white --- I couldn't love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn't feel it."
-E. Corral, from "Poem After Frida Kahlo's Painting 'The Broken Column'"
Like many, I first encountered Eduardo C. Corral's work via Poetry Magazine, which first began publishing his poetry in its December 2011 issue. However, it was the experience of hearing him read aloud from his masterful three-part sonnet sequence "Border Triptych" that convinced me I needed to buy his Yale-Prize-winning debut book, Slow Lightning.
If you decide to read Slow Lightning, "Border Triptych" is a good place to start, as it's probably the most accessible work in this collection: a collage of three relatively straightforward narrative poems that deal with the politically charged topic of Mexico-to-U.S. immigration in an intimate, savvy way, not shying away from either the horror or the humor in the complex situations they interrogate. The rest of the book is stranger, more surreal, more experimental in its approach to forms, and more difficult overall to classify. While Slow Lightning is much more than merely a "topical" book, a number of recognizable topics do surface repeatedly in these shimmering poems, including: gay male love, the looming shadow of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Mexico-to-U.S. border crossings, and anti-Latino racism. This last ranges from microaggressions ("In graduate school a landlord asked,/Here to pick strawberries?") to state-sanctioned violence ("Josefa Segovia was tried, convicted & hanged on July 5, 1851, in Downieville, California, for killing an Anglo miner, a man who the day before had assaulted her").
There is much to admire about the language with which these weighty topics are treated. Sometimes Corral's verbal virtuosity manifests as a concise, almost-aphoristic wit: "In high school I worked as a bag boy. To prevent shoplifting my boss/had me follow the Mexicans & the Native Americans who came in to shop./I was slightly troubled by this. So I only followed the handsome men." Other times, when Corral flexes his linguistic muscles, the result is an instance of shatteringly gorgeous imagery: "Kahlo undresses in front of a mirror./Her spine: a pouring of sand/through an hourglass/of blood."
Though many of the poems in Slow Lightning are perfectly effective as stand-alone works of art, this is overall a collection that benefits from being judged as a synergistic whole. A single short poem like "Want," when evaluated on its own, may not be an entirely convincing argument for the parallels between parental suffering and youthful desire, but it becomes more powerful when viewed in the context of other poems on related subjects, like the delightful "Ditat Deus."
Other reviewers have made much of the fact that Corral liberally peppers his English poems with Spanish words and phrases. As a long-time student of French, I was able to figure out the meanings of most of these words and phrases with the help of context clues. Occasionally, though, a quick trip to Google was needed to make sense of an obscure-to-me Mexican cultural reference or a slangy/colloquial Spanish expression. Please do not let Corral's use of Spanish deter you from reading this book. These poems are rewarding even if you don't take the time to Google every Spanish word (though they are even more rewarding if you do). I don't exaggerate when I say this is the best debut I have read in a very long time. It will inspire you to write; it will inspire you to think; it will inspire you to make mental connections and feel sympathies you hadn't felt before. It will enrich you.
-E. Corral, from "Poem After Frida Kahlo's Painting 'The Broken Column'"
Like many, I first encountered Eduardo C. Corral's work via Poetry Magazine, which first began publishing his poetry in its December 2011 issue. However, it was the experience of hearing him read aloud from his masterful three-part sonnet sequence "Border Triptych" that convinced me I needed to buy his Yale-Prize-winning debut book, Slow Lightning.
If you decide to read Slow Lightning, "Border Triptych" is a good place to start, as it's probably the most accessible work in this collection: a collage of three relatively straightforward narrative poems that deal with the politically charged topic of Mexico-to-U.S. immigration in an intimate, savvy way, not shying away from either the horror or the humor in the complex situations they interrogate. The rest of the book is stranger, more surreal, more experimental in its approach to forms, and more difficult overall to classify. While Slow Lightning is much more than merely a "topical" book, a number of recognizable topics do surface repeatedly in these shimmering poems, including: gay male love, the looming shadow of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Mexico-to-U.S. border crossings, and anti-Latino racism. This last ranges from microaggressions ("In graduate school a landlord asked,/Here to pick strawberries?") to state-sanctioned violence ("Josefa Segovia was tried, convicted & hanged on July 5, 1851, in Downieville, California, for killing an Anglo miner, a man who the day before had assaulted her").
There is much to admire about the language with which these weighty topics are treated. Sometimes Corral's verbal virtuosity manifests as a concise, almost-aphoristic wit: "In high school I worked as a bag boy. To prevent shoplifting my boss/had me follow the Mexicans & the Native Americans who came in to shop./I was slightly troubled by this. So I only followed the handsome men." Other times, when Corral flexes his linguistic muscles, the result is an instance of shatteringly gorgeous imagery: "Kahlo undresses in front of a mirror./Her spine: a pouring of sand/through an hourglass/of blood."
Though many of the poems in Slow Lightning are perfectly effective as stand-alone works of art, this is overall a collection that benefits from being judged as a synergistic whole. A single short poem like "Want," when evaluated on its own, may not be an entirely convincing argument for the parallels between parental suffering and youthful desire, but it becomes more powerful when viewed in the context of other poems on related subjects, like the delightful "Ditat Deus."
Other reviewers have made much of the fact that Corral liberally peppers his English poems with Spanish words and phrases. As a long-time student of French, I was able to figure out the meanings of most of these words and phrases with the help of context clues. Occasionally, though, a quick trip to Google was needed to make sense of an obscure-to-me Mexican cultural reference or a slangy/colloquial Spanish expression. Please do not let Corral's use of Spanish deter you from reading this book. These poems are rewarding even if you don't take the time to Google every Spanish word (though they are even more rewarding if you do). I don't exaggerate when I say this is the best debut I have read in a very long time. It will inspire you to write; it will inspire you to think; it will inspire you to make mental connections and feel sympathies you hadn't felt before. It will enrich you.
April 21, 2012
Eduardo C. Corral's "Slow Lightning" is rapid electrocution. The language and imagery in his collection make even the hair on your arms stand up in full attention. He gets hit, stands up again, comes back for more. Corral's poetry is like the rolled "r" in the Spanish language: he wants to keep saying it, you want to keep hearing it. Haunting and lovely.
April 22, 2012
Oh, the top of my head! It has come off.
May 12, 2018
Why is this soooooooooooooo good?
Eduardo is truly a gifted poet. The type of imagery and emotion evoked by stringing together words and stanzas is incredible! This book is a must read, a must have, a must keep at your bedside counter to relish every few months.
"You are nothing like my father
and like my father
you are nothing"
Corral mentions his father or the use of that paternal relationship throughout his work unsure of what this relation is actually like in real life the collection does exist in contrasts.
"Once a man offered me his heart like a glass of water. No, once... Here's a joke for you. Why do Mexicans make tamales at Christmas? So they would have something to unwrap. A lover told me that. I stared into his eyes believing the brown surrounding his pupils were rings, like Saturn's. I have to sit down to say this. Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn't love him. Not because he was a beast or white---I couldn't love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn't feel it."
This stanza speaks to such a GREAT divide. How one person can be oblivious to what is going on around them, to what is happening right beside them in their own bed. Corral addresses this urgency for escape with a delicacy that is profound.
His poems are vivid, intimate with a subtle rawness that stretches elegance. I can not possibly love Slow Lightning anymore than I already do.
Eduardo is truly a gifted poet. The type of imagery and emotion evoked by stringing together words and stanzas is incredible! This book is a must read, a must have, a must keep at your bedside counter to relish every few months.
"You are nothing like my father
and like my father
you are nothing"
Corral mentions his father or the use of that paternal relationship throughout his work unsure of what this relation is actually like in real life the collection does exist in contrasts.
"Once a man offered me his heart like a glass of water. No, once... Here's a joke for you. Why do Mexicans make tamales at Christmas? So they would have something to unwrap. A lover told me that. I stared into his eyes believing the brown surrounding his pupils were rings, like Saturn's. I have to sit down to say this. Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn't love him. Not because he was a beast or white---I couldn't love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn't feel it."
This stanza speaks to such a GREAT divide. How one person can be oblivious to what is going on around them, to what is happening right beside them in their own bed. Corral addresses this urgency for escape with a delicacy that is profound.
His poems are vivid, intimate with a subtle rawness that stretches elegance. I can not possibly love Slow Lightning anymore than I already do.
December 6, 2024
yes sometimes i still think about these poems 5 years later.
January 6, 2023
Slow Lightning by Eduardo C. Corral
Corral juxtaposes in this collection both immigration and his homosexuality. In this collection of thirty-one poems there are several that I really liked:
1. In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes - a touching poem about his father who was an illegal immigrant
2. Ditat Dues - a poem about handsome men
3. St. Anthony's Church - man sees his surroundings and family as his church
In these three, he writes lovingly about his father in several poems. They were relatable and well wrought. These were my favorites.
3.5 stars
Corral juxtaposes in this collection both immigration and his homosexuality. In this collection of thirty-one poems there are several that I really liked:
1. In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes - a touching poem about his father who was an illegal immigrant
2. Ditat Dues - a poem about handsome men
3. St. Anthony's Church - man sees his surroundings and family as his church
In these three, he writes lovingly about his father in several poems. They were relatable and well wrought. These were my favorites.
3.5 stars
April 12, 2014
This is the first volume of poetry from Eduardo C. Corral, and I'm looking forward to what he writes next. Corral's father, a frequent subject in his poems, snuck into the United States, and Corral describes himself in one poem as an "Illegal-American."
The poems are sometimes in Spanish and English, switching back and forth with the rapidity that many bilingual think and speak in, particularly first-generation citizens. There is no translation, because he does not want to privilege one language over another.
I kept re-reading some of these because they transport you to specific landscapes, situations, with twinges of fantasy and imagination. Some of the poems are printed on the page like normal, others you have to turn the book to read. There is a great variety in style and topic.
Some of my favorites:
Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso
Cayucos
Corral reads several poems from this volume at the Writers Studio Reading Series, and you will get a better sense hearing the poets with the changing language and bits of humor and pain.
The poems are sometimes in Spanish and English, switching back and forth with the rapidity that many bilingual think and speak in, particularly first-generation citizens. There is no translation, because he does not want to privilege one language over another.
I kept re-reading some of these because they transport you to specific landscapes, situations, with twinges of fantasy and imagination. Some of the poems are printed on the page like normal, others you have to turn the book to read. There is a great variety in style and topic.
Some of my favorites:
Self-Portrait with Tumbling and Lasso
"...I'm scarlet
and threshold. At my touch,
a piano
melts like a slab
of black ice. I'm
steam rising,
dissipating. I'm a ghost undressing.
I'm a cowboy
riding bareback. ..."
Cayucos
"...Throw your shadow overboard
Proverbs, blessings scratched into wood
The tar of my country better than the honey of others"
Corral reads several poems from this volume at the Writers Studio Reading Series, and you will get a better sense hearing the poets with the changing language and bits of humor and pain.
April 15, 2012
So many moments of sheer imaginative energy and uninhibited "going for it" or "saying it." Reading this made me feel empowered to let my imagination guide me. From the deer with honey on its hind leg to the bride too poor for lilies who holds a glass of milk, the images are as resonant as dreams. Some of my favorite moments:
"Are the knees & elbows
the first knots
the dead untie?"
"A saxophone is nothing like an ampersand in his hands."
"After a storm saguaros glisten
like mint trombones."
"Are the knees & elbows
the first knots
the dead untie?"
"A saxophone is nothing like an ampersand in his hands."
"After a storm saguaros glisten
like mint trombones."
September 23, 2024
his language is so alive.
“it pecks and pecks at the moles on my skin, / swallows the moles / like seeds. i asked once for a father. you gave me a wreath. / i asked for a sonnet. you / peeled back the skin and muscle of your left hand: fourteen bones.”
“it pecks and pecks at the moles on my skin, / swallows the moles / like seeds. i asked once for a father. you gave me a wreath. / i asked for a sonnet. you / peeled back the skin and muscle of your left hand: fourteen bones.”
September 5, 2025
I LOVE this poetry collection SO MUCH! I feel like with poetry, it’s so hit or miss for me, but craft wise, this book just did so much so well!!! Here are some of my favourite poems:
- “in Colorado my Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes”: slightly biased here because I Corral read it when he visited UNCW, and this is the poem that made me want to pick up the book. But the musicality and the sound and the weaving of languages in the poem is just. So. Good.
- “Poem After Frida Kahlo’s Painting “The Broken Column”I love poems with multiple parts, and this one feels like a braided essay If it were a poem. It’s also the poem I keep coming back to in this collection! When I first read it, I had the sense of “I want to try somethings like this, and that’s when you know you’ve got a good piece.
- “To the Beastangle”: ok! The enjambment and line endings and the way each line works as an independent unit??!!!! This was so cool!!!!
Anywys, I’m very excited to revisit this collection and look at it closer!
- “in Colorado my Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes”: slightly biased here because I Corral read it when he visited UNCW, and this is the poem that made me want to pick up the book. But the musicality and the sound and the weaving of languages in the poem is just. So. Good.
- “Poem After Frida Kahlo’s Painting “The Broken Column”I love poems with multiple parts, and this one feels like a braided essay If it were a poem. It’s also the poem I keep coming back to in this collection! When I first read it, I had the sense of “I want to try somethings like this, and that’s when you know you’ve got a good piece.
- “To the Beastangle”: ok! The enjambment and line endings and the way each line works as an independent unit??!!!! This was so cool!!!!
Anywys, I’m very excited to revisit this collection and look at it closer!
May 6, 2013
An auspicious debut. Probably my favorite Yale Series of Younger Poets selection in years. Competition judge Carl Phillips writes a wonderful introduction. Corral has genuine, original poetic talent.
from "Ditat Deus"
I learned to make love to a man
by touching my father.
.....
He would lift me each morning
onto the bathroom counter,
dot my small palms
with dollops of shaving cream
so I could lather his face.
from "Ditat Deus"
I learned to make love to a man
by touching my father.
.....
He would lift me each morning
onto the bathroom counter,
dot my small palms
with dollops of shaving cream
so I could lather his face.
October 18, 2013
Corral establishes a distinctive voice and atmosphere through his collection, yet many pieces left me with the sense that there was a frustratingly unprenetrable meaning behind the powerful imagery. His tone is too profound to suggest a lack of meaning, and yet his strings of images are too diverse to be analyzed effectively.
April 23, 2017
"the engine
stalls as he turns
the ignition I shout
a few words arroyo
socorro arroz
the rolled r's coax
The engine into a roar"
I would have enjoyed this collection more if my Spanish was better, even so a solid 3.5 star read
stalls as he turns
the ignition I shout
a few words arroyo
socorro arroz
the rolled r's coax
The engine into a roar"
I would have enjoyed this collection more if my Spanish was better, even so a solid 3.5 star read
March 31, 2013
I liked this, though this might've been the quickest reading poetry book I've read in a while.
Corral does a couple kinds of poems here: there are narrative poems, some of which, for example, deal with his dad's experiences or his relationship with his dad; some others are stories of border crossers, coyotes and all that. Then there are more fragmented narrative poems, the kind of things that Carl Phillips writes (so it makes sense he writes the intro, and maybe helped Yale pick this manuscript). Then there are more visionary strange poems, like the Angelbeast/ Beastangel or AIDS poems-- these are kind of in that strange vedic mode that I think of as high Yeats, but again, what do I know.
Many of the poems could be described as macaronic-- I'm sure there's not really a lot of Spanish here if you read Spanish, but there was more than I could process by looking for cognates and what I've learned being a kind of casual listener. I think that's probably a warning to take my views with a grain of salt. I mean to go back through this again and make a better show of it, with google translate open:)
It's a good collection. I don't know how long it'll stay with me, though.
(I did go back and re-read this with google translate, which helped a lot, I think, especially in the long middle section where the funeral takes place. I really like this book-- I'm struck by my comment wondering if this book will stick with me, and still don't have an answer. It's a really enjoyable read, though, and I think a second read through made me like it ever more. It's formally inventive, interested in narrative and art and language, aware of poetry and what poetry might mean (via the interpolated corridas. It's a good little book.)
Corral does a couple kinds of poems here: there are narrative poems, some of which, for example, deal with his dad's experiences or his relationship with his dad; some others are stories of border crossers, coyotes and all that. Then there are more fragmented narrative poems, the kind of things that Carl Phillips writes (so it makes sense he writes the intro, and maybe helped Yale pick this manuscript). Then there are more visionary strange poems, like the Angelbeast/ Beastangel or AIDS poems-- these are kind of in that strange vedic mode that I think of as high Yeats, but again, what do I know.
Many of the poems could be described as macaronic-- I'm sure there's not really a lot of Spanish here if you read Spanish, but there was more than I could process by looking for cognates and what I've learned being a kind of casual listener. I think that's probably a warning to take my views with a grain of salt. I mean to go back through this again and make a better show of it, with google translate open:)
It's a good collection. I don't know how long it'll stay with me, though.
(I did go back and re-read this with google translate, which helped a lot, I think, especially in the long middle section where the funeral takes place. I really like this book-- I'm struck by my comment wondering if this book will stick with me, and still don't have an answer. It's a really enjoyable read, though, and I think a second read through made me like it ever more. It's formally inventive, interested in narrative and art and language, aware of poetry and what poetry might mean (via the interpolated corridas. It's a good little book.)
May 20, 2012
The central poem of this excellent first book, Variation on a Theme by Jose Montoya, uses Robert Hayden's masterpiece Runagate Runagate as a touchstone for an engagement with the experience of Mexican immigrants (Corral emphasizes the fact that his father was an "illegal" and claims the identity of an "Illegal American." Hayden's a good point of reference in many ways. The poems which spoke to me most powerfully were ones that could be called "political" but they never reduce experience to ideology. In another echo of Hayden, the "illegal" also relates to Corral's homosexuality, which is a central aspect of the framing poems (the second and penultimate poems of the collection are both titled Acquried Immune Deficiency Syndrome." Corral's sense of language it fluid; he works through image more than statement, and his primary inter texts are visual (which often loses me a bit). The movement back and forth from Spanish to English reenforces the thematic and imagistic structures. The Variations poem is definitely my favorite, but others to start with include "Watermark" "In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes," "Border Triptychh," "Want," "Poem after Frida Kahlos' Painting The Broken Column, "Temple in a Teapot," and "Velvet Mesquite." He'll definitely stay on my list.
December 24, 2015
I felt more things reading this tiny book of poems than I did if I watched all 7 Star Wars movies simultaneously and could comprehend the visual schizophrenia that would ensue.
Read
January 18, 2026excellent. slowly working my way through all the YSYPs :)
February 25, 2026
the way he uses spanish words and phrases for no reason reminds me of disney channel shows with latino characters
December 30, 2014
In his Intro to the book, Carl Phillips remarks on how Eduardo Corral's poems are full of "code-switching." I want to split hairs with this terminology, because I think it distracts from what Corral does really well in Slow Lightning. "Code-switching" implies a deliberate mixing of disparate discourses, which in turn is often a way of commenting on the appropriateness of one, or the assumptions of the other, or what's missing in both. To my ear, Corral's poems are not code-switching, they're just bilingual. The fact that I don't have enough Spanish to understand them all is MY problem, not the poems'. In fact the poems seem to inhabit a wonderful in-between-ness that is the opposite of code-switching, because they feel completely natural and at ease.
This point can be argued further on another day, perhaps. Whatever this code-switching/bilingual argument amounts to, Corral's book is also full of magical image-making, some wonderful affectionate poems of love and praise, some sexiness, all amidst a dark sense of the dangers facing immigrants. Some really strong poems here, worth reading.
Weird addendum: Corral really seems to like the small of a man's back. I'm pretty certain I caught four sensual references to that unfortunately under-named body part. The first or second is wonderful, but by the third or fourth I couldn't help wishing we had another name for it. Is there one in Spanish?
This point can be argued further on another day, perhaps. Whatever this code-switching/bilingual argument amounts to, Corral's book is also full of magical image-making, some wonderful affectionate poems of love and praise, some sexiness, all amidst a dark sense of the dangers facing immigrants. Some really strong poems here, worth reading.
Weird addendum: Corral really seems to like the small of a man's back. I'm pretty certain I caught four sensual references to that unfortunately under-named body part. The first or second is wonderful, but by the third or fourth I couldn't help wishing we had another name for it. Is there one in Spanish?
January 4, 2015
4.5. Wow! I love this so much! I love the language and how the lines, "As my master ate, I ate" are repeated in the first and last poems of the collection is just wonderful. The themes of sexuality, ethnicity, father and son relationship, estrangement, code switching with Spanish and English and how it's done so well. I was blown away with Corral's language and the images I was reading and picturing. Carl Phillips also explained in the forward about servitude, obedience and enslavement shown in the first two poems which makes it so powerful. The estrangement and code switching is one I related to a lot. That feeling of not belonging anywhere or navigating two cultures, two identities, two languages and what that means. Corral also explores the estrangement between father and son and how complicated that relationship can be as well as the relationship between two lovers and how that can change. There are also moments of joy in his poems. So many beautiful, breath taking poems in this collection and I can't wait to re-read it in the future.
February 18, 2016
I sense a passionate love of language and sound contained within the lines of Slow Lightning. I also notice a ritual in Corral’s imagery—the wolf, string instruments, milk, liquid collecting in the small of a back, the rain. These images invite one another to shed light upon the next, exposing the shadows behind both. Perception is in motion, and Corral’s images radiate this. One of my favorites is from Misael: Oil, Acrylic, Mixed Media on Canvas: Julio Galán: 2001, when the interruption of a wound is described as “salmon leaping out of black water.” Another is “a scarlet / snake wound / in its dark antlers” from the first Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome—I read this as a dream state, the second an awakening from the first, interlaced. Corral’s arresting imagery provides the context to examine identity and the vibrancy in duality.
June 21, 2013
Slow Lightning is a collection that doesn't shy away from the controversy, ugliness, and despair that honesty breeds. Corral tells stories that hit you and stick with you, as in "Border Triptych", and his more personal confessions (he begins the second part of "Ditat Deus" with the lines "I learned to make love to a man / by touching my father") will all but shatter you, while also reminding you that what you're reading will not cheat you and hold back anything.
A short but intensely sensual work that's worth reading (also worth noting is the brilliant foreword by Carl Phillips that more than complements the collection - I wish more modern poetry books would have introductions like this one).
A short but intensely sensual work that's worth reading (also worth noting is the brilliant foreword by Carl Phillips that more than complements the collection - I wish more modern poetry books would have introductions like this one).
May 3, 2016
This is a book I couldn't put down.
It's incredible how Corral switches between Spanish and English--there is a constant back-and-forth and he pulls it off very naturally. ""Eyes the color of garrapatas / ... / Cell phone strapped like a pistola" ("Variation on a Theme"). "Variation on a Theme" is an incredible poem about a border-crossing man's life.
In this book, the Mexico/USA border is permeable but leaves a lasting mark on the narrator: "He's an illegal. / I'm an Illegal-American" ("In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes").
"You are nothing like my father. / And like my father / you are nothing" ("To a Jornalero Cleaning Out my Neighbor's Garage").
Hard-hitting, incredible book.
It's incredible how Corral switches between Spanish and English--there is a constant back-and-forth and he pulls it off very naturally. ""Eyes the color of garrapatas / ... / Cell phone strapped like a pistola" ("Variation on a Theme"). "Variation on a Theme" is an incredible poem about a border-crossing man's life.
In this book, the Mexico/USA border is permeable but leaves a lasting mark on the narrator: "He's an illegal. / I'm an Illegal-American" ("In Colorado My Father Scoured and Stacked Dishes").
"You are nothing like my father. / And like my father / you are nothing" ("To a Jornalero Cleaning Out my Neighbor's Garage").
Hard-hitting, incredible book.
September 21, 2025
Eros (homosexual, filial), ekphrasis, and migration drive these poems. Corral’s genius lies in the arresting clarity of his images, in code-switching, and in repurposing resources (art, poetry, experience) to somehow explain, or at least approximate, an identity prone to shifts, to shades. Appropriately, these poems resist closure, the wound within them always fresh and wide-eyed.
Also, it has been a while since a book of poetry has crushed me in all possible directions. Good thing I'm masochistic.
Also, it has been a while since a book of poetry has crushed me in all possible directions. Good thing I'm masochistic.
January 24, 2014
I just finished this amazing book--startling, strange, erotic, important. The Spanish can be problematic at times, even if you know some Spanish, but I reread and looked up the words I didn't know the second time through; poems just became more impressive. This is a collection that really reads like a collection, not a group of poems thrown together into book format; there are echoes of poems and lines throughout the book. Read this!
June 16, 2016
It's been a while since I sat down and read a poetry collection, so it took a while to switch gears properly and really pay attention to the poetry in Slow Lightning. I won't pretend to be able to dissect it or explain it, but I can say that I really enjoyed a good chunk of it. Eduardo Corral has a wonderful way with words and many of the poems in this collection flow perfectly while invoking a wide variety of vivid images and sensations.
September 25, 2012
Honestly it just wasn't my type of book. It's very very abstract poetry, and for me it just goes over my head. I'm still giving it 3 stars just because the quality of the writing isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I wasn't able to understand it because I'm bad at poetry. For people who like this type of poetry, maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did.
July 18, 2016
I don't read too many books of poetry, but this was mentioned by Junot Diaz in an interview so I picked it up. Haunting and surreal, but what I was looking for and appreciated the most was how he captured the images and emotions of immigrants in the borderlands. With such few words, Corral conveys volumes about pain, struggle, addiction, loss....all while avoiding tired stereotypes.
March 7, 2015
Corral's words are beautiful and feel so tangible. It is a bummer I cannot appreciate poetry so well unless I am in class devoted to it. I loved when he wrote poems about other paintings, even though they seemingly had nothing to do with it, I liked to think of him looking towards those paintings for inspiration just as I would read a poem of his while writing my novel.
4.5 Stars
4.5 Stars
September 8, 2015
What's most pleasing about this collection is the playful smoothness with which Corral code shifts between languages. Being bilingual in English and Spanish, I suspect that the duality of language means a bit more to me here, but I think it's still accessible to English-only speakers. There are a number of really playful, bi-lingual puns and a whole bunch of smalls of backs.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews