Return of the River: The Selected Poems of Roberto Sosa

by Roberto Sosa, JoAnne Engelbert (Translator)

Return of the River presents a wide selection of Roberto Sosa's poetry in superb translations by JoAnne Engelbert. 

Born in Yoro, Honduras in 1930 into a poor family, Roberto Sosa had to struggle hard to gain an education and didn't publish his first book until he was nearly thirty. After he won the Adonais Prize (1969) and the Casa de las Americas Prize (1971), critics recognized him as a major talent.

Genres: Poetry

263 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2001

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

[Steven Godin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enter your residence;
how not feel small inside it?
When I am bathed in your light,
there's no more sorrow in my poetry.
I've never seen reality so clean
as when it comes to you
on tiptoe
and unarmed.

I feel taller then:
all your footsteps fit into my fingers,
and I walk with you
over the bridge of water
to where the whole earth is a straight path.

The vowels of happiness
are always taking flight.
But you don't know this, daughter.
How could your little head, so new,
know such a thing?

My love
announces
bright, everlasting boughs.
My heart will shelter you
as far as it can reach.

But life
has quicksand
and I fear for you.

Sleep soundly, then,
beside the waters
flowing past your cradle.

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

The elegiac and erotic lyrics of Roberto Sosa present a voice as personal, as elegant and as timeless as those of the great poets of the T'ang dynasty or the Greek Anthology. Sosa joins passion and humility, ecstasy and grief, clarity and wisdom, to make poems as simple, lucid and incandescent as anyone writing today.

— Sam Hamill

Everything
is falling. I say your name as softly as I can.
*
Ah sea, my inner sea
your arches, rising from my heart,
lead always to a purer place
where my time and my desire
float in your calm.

[Rogue · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5