The Common Grief

by Roberto Sosa, JoAnne Engelbert (Translator)

The Common Grief is a bilingual collection of poems from Honduran poet Roberto Sosa. His work is characterized by clarity and richness of language combined with an attack on privilege and oppression.

Genres: Poetry

109 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Roberto Sosa (18 April 1930 – 23 May 2011) was an author and poet born in Yoro, Honduras. He spent his early life working hard to help provide for his poor family. When he was almost thirty years old, he published his first book.

Sosa published Los Pobres in 1969, which won the Adonais Prize in Spain. Un Mundo Para Todos Dividido, published in 1971, won the Casa de las Americas Prize in Cuba. By 1990, he had published six books of poetry, three of prose, and two anthologies of Honduran literature. In 1990, he published Obra Completa (Complete Works).

The Difficult Days, Poems, The Common Grief, and The Return of the River have all been translated into English.

At the time of his death, Sosa lived in Tegucigalpa, the capital city of Honduras. He was the editor of a magazine, Presente, and the president of the Honduras Journalists’ Union. He also taught literature at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing flickers now but pain
in this instant that is already eternity
and a day.
*
How many earthquakes have I crumbled? the path
winds on forever
wounding me.
*
I sought your love, its water music, with the fever
of one marked for sacrifice,
upflower, in a dream.

Then any little thing...
a feather for example filled our memory with birds.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

honestly i rlly enjoyed this collection of poetry. I found that reading the introduction was very helpful in understanding some of the context and content of the poems. the poems felt very personal to Sosa yet still relatable to the reader. some of the poems about women seemed a little shallow tbh despite the intro saying Sosa wrote about women as female subjects, not objects, but a lot of it was about female bodies through the male gaze which I just found unappealing. nonetheless, I still enjoyed reading and I especially loved some of the poems like “The House Where Poetry Lives” and “The Most Ancient of the Names of Fire”. his use of language is so lyrical yet grounded and very emotional. 4/5

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodbye, she said. And closed the city.

Just yesterday, because of her extreme absence,
the clay doll, my little friend,
cast herself into the void.
The library has shed its leaves. Pictures blur
to shapeless stains.

The cricket of the moon chirps endlessly.

With my heart in my hand I walk down a dead end street
in a dream from which I can't awaken.

[Peter Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I Fw his shit but sum Of it is cringe I thot he was Big but none of his stuff has more than like 50 review tf anyway goes to show that there’s not much difference between skill of famous and not famous poets (unless U belong to a group of like 30 or 40 geniuses who r Not beholden to time)