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The Book of What Remains
“To write well about your life, you need to have a life worth writing about. On that score, Sáenz hits pay dirt.” —Booklist
“A former Catholic priest, this poet creates prayerful verse that is at once mystical and utterly human.” —The Washington Post
Poet, novelist, and popular YA writer Benjamin Alire Sáenz writes to the core truth of life’s ever-shifting memories. Set along the Mexican border, the contrast between the desert’s austere beauty and the brutality of border politics mirrors humanity’s capacity for both generosity and cruelty. In his numbered series “Meditation on Living in the Desert,” Sáenz turns to memory, heritage, and a host of literary progenitors as he directly confronts matters of faith, civil rights, and contemporary politics—always with the unrelenting moral urge to speak truth and do something.
I am looking at a book of photographs.
The photographs document the exodus of Mexicans crossing the desert.
I am staring at the face of a woman who is more a girl than a woman.
She is handing her documents to a government official.
I know and you know and we all know that the documents are forged.
The official is not in the photograph.
Only the frightened eyes of a girl.
A former Catholic priest who worked with Mother Teresa, Benjamin Alire Sáenz has published five books of poetry, four novels, a collection of short stories, and two bilingual children’s books. He received the American Book Award and teaches in the bilingual MFA program at University of Texas, El Paso.
- GenresPoetryNonfictionAdult
124 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2010
4 people are currently reading
1189 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
38 books15.7k followersBenjamin Alire Sáenz (born 16 August 1954) is an award-winning American poet, novelist and writer of children's books.
He was born at Old Picacho, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado where he received a B.A. degree in Humanities and Philosophy in 1977. He studied Theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.
In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an M.A. degree in Creative Writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American Literature. A year later, he was awarded a Wallace E. Stegner fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his Ph.D., he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.
His first novel, Carry Me Like Water was a saga that brought together the Victorian novel and the Latin American tradition of magic realism and received much critical attention.
In The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), his fifth book of poems, he writes to the core truth of life's ever-shifting memories. Set along the Mexican border, the contrast between the desert's austere beauty and the brutality of border politics mirrors humanity's capacity for both generosity and cruelty.
In 2005, he curated a show of photographs by Julian Cardona.
He continues to teach in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso.
He was born at Old Picacho, New Mexico, the fourth of seven children, and was raised on a small farm near Mesilla, New Mexico. He graduated from Las Cruces High School in 1972. That fall, he entered St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado where he received a B.A. degree in Humanities and Philosophy in 1977. He studied Theology at the University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium from 1977 to 1981. He was a priest for a few years in El Paso, Texas before leaving the order.
In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an M.A. degree in Creative Writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American Literature. A year later, he was awarded a Wallace E. Stegner fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the Ph.D. program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his Ph.D., he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.
His first novel, Carry Me Like Water was a saga that brought together the Victorian novel and the Latin American tradition of magic realism and received much critical attention.
In The Book of What Remains (Copper Canyon Press, 2010), his fifth book of poems, he writes to the core truth of life's ever-shifting memories. Set along the Mexican border, the contrast between the desert's austere beauty and the brutality of border politics mirrors humanity's capacity for both generosity and cruelty.
In 2005, he curated a show of photographs by Julian Cardona.
He continues to teach in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas at El Paso.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 4, 2020
A book of poetry from one of my favorite authors who also wrote Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe. Beautifully written full of life, love and heartbreak.
May 15, 2015
Absolutely stunning! This is exactly what poetry should be. It should be beautiful, painful words put together. Words crafted so perfectly that at times you smile, laugh, press your hand against your heart, and tear up.
Saenz, that man is a genius. I admire him. I adore him. I want him to never stop writing.
Saenz, that man is a genius. I admire him. I adore him. I want him to never stop writing.
December 18, 2010
My reason for recommending this is the same reason I’m not sure I’m qualified to recommend it: it’s the first book of poetry I’ve ever voluntarily read cover to cover. I’m certainly not anti-poetry and really enjoy evocative language that has rhythmic and aesthetic qualities—poetic language, if you will—but long chunks of ongoing poetry piled on top of one another just generally don’t do it for me. I was delighted when this one did.
Perhaps one of the things I liked was that, for poetry, it’s almost prosaic. Often poetry seems to me to be about language first and content second, but in this I very clearly felt the language was just the tool being used in the service of what it was saying. Very conversational, at times organically stream-of-consciousness-ish, but with a non-linear, connected circularity that belies any attempts to call it random. Saenz’s writing is intimately personal and confessional, giving voice to raw pain and anger, although themes like politics and place and race keep showing up as they inform his identity, and there is a sense of connecting his particular struggles to a greater humanity. The overarching theme is finding the fragile, struggling, harsh life and defiant beauty in the desert, which serves as a metaphor on many levels, particularly that of his damaged psyche.
Meditation on Living in the Desert
No. 2
I love the sand, the heat, the arid nights.
I am in love with plants that can survive the droughts.
I am also in love with air-conditioning.
I refuse to recycle.
I am helping to make the entire world into a desert.
I live in the desert. I want everyone else to live in one, too.
When all the trees have disappeared, we can all read Robert Frost poems and feel sad.
Perhaps one of the things I liked was that, for poetry, it’s almost prosaic. Often poetry seems to me to be about language first and content second, but in this I very clearly felt the language was just the tool being used in the service of what it was saying. Very conversational, at times organically stream-of-consciousness-ish, but with a non-linear, connected circularity that belies any attempts to call it random. Saenz’s writing is intimately personal and confessional, giving voice to raw pain and anger, although themes like politics and place and race keep showing up as they inform his identity, and there is a sense of connecting his particular struggles to a greater humanity. The overarching theme is finding the fragile, struggling, harsh life and defiant beauty in the desert, which serves as a metaphor on many levels, particularly that of his damaged psyche.
Meditation on Living in the Desert
No. 2
I love the sand, the heat, the arid nights.
I am in love with plants that can survive the droughts.
I am also in love with air-conditioning.
I refuse to recycle.
I am helping to make the entire world into a desert.
I live in the desert. I want everyone else to live in one, too.
When all the trees have disappeared, we can all read Robert Frost poems and feel sad.
February 14, 2024
Brilliant and sad, as expected. 4.7 stars
Read
December 14, 2009The Book of What Remains by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 2010. 126 pp. $16.00 paperback.
The Book of What Remains is the fifth volume of poetry by El Paso-based writer and artist Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Best known for his work as an accomplished author of young adult books and novels, Sáenz returns to his redoubtable roots as an inimitable poet in his latest collection. In The Book of What Remains, Sáenz, a former Catholic priest, explores the aftermath of both private and public tragedies, border violence, and the casualties of war, to consider the Christian apostle Saint Paul’s dictum on what remains, namely faith, hope, and love. (115)
Sáenz divides his book into three major sections. Long narrative poems are intercut with a series of eighteen meditations on living in the desert, inserted throughout the first and third sections of the collection. The poet characterizes the harsh and unforgiving qualities of the desert: “your dreams will not save you from the sun” (18), but also points to the ways in which “human history is even crueler than the desert” (184), in recording the history of nuclear testing in Alamogordo, New Mexico. These short contemplative poems illuminate the disharmonious relationship between mankind and the land; Meditation No. 2 satirizes a poetic speaker who endlessly consumes natural resources. His lack of concern for the future of the land culminates with a tongue-in-cheek statement “When all the trees have disappeared, we can all read Robert Frost poems / and feel sad.” (8) There are no traces of “Imperialist Nostalgia” in Sáenz’s poems, which are intense political reflections on a personal ecopoetics rooted firmly in the life and culture of the border experience.
Tragedy, simultaneously pedestrian and life altering, is a major theme throughout Sáenz’s collection. “The
Comforts of the Neighborhood” tells the tale of nineteen-year-old Juan Patricio Peraza, an unarmed and undocumented migrant worker that is mercilessly gunned down by Border Patrol agents in the poet’s hometown. Elsewhere, the poet writes of the breakdown of a marriage that results in the loss of his home and a beloved pet in the divorce settlement. But it is the capacity for deep feeling that bestows truth and beauty upon the poet and gives him the gift of song throughout The Book of What Remains.
At the heart of Sáenz’s collection are the long poems “The Ruined Cities of My Broken, Broken Heart” and “What I Have to Sing About.” In “The Ruined Cities…” the poet addresses himself:
You have been wandering
in the desert for forty years
searching for water
and a politics
and a theology
and a city you call home (55)
Seeking reconciliation in a life filled with ruin, the poet only arrives in “What I Have to Sing About” at the truth that “the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip” (108). There is no performative lament that encumbers Sáenz’s poetic searching, only a gesture towards the transfigurative act of redefining one’s own terms. Through a belief in certainty, goodness, and compassion, the poet arrives at an emancipatory poetics that rejects the “logic of slavery” (5) to realize the poignant epigram that opens the third section of The Book of What Remains: “You are what you remember.” (67)
The Book of What Remains is the fifth volume of poetry by El Paso-based writer and artist Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Best known for his work as an accomplished author of young adult books and novels, Sáenz returns to his redoubtable roots as an inimitable poet in his latest collection. In The Book of What Remains, Sáenz, a former Catholic priest, explores the aftermath of both private and public tragedies, border violence, and the casualties of war, to consider the Christian apostle Saint Paul’s dictum on what remains, namely faith, hope, and love. (115)
Sáenz divides his book into three major sections. Long narrative poems are intercut with a series of eighteen meditations on living in the desert, inserted throughout the first and third sections of the collection. The poet characterizes the harsh and unforgiving qualities of the desert: “your dreams will not save you from the sun” (18), but also points to the ways in which “human history is even crueler than the desert” (184), in recording the history of nuclear testing in Alamogordo, New Mexico. These short contemplative poems illuminate the disharmonious relationship between mankind and the land; Meditation No. 2 satirizes a poetic speaker who endlessly consumes natural resources. His lack of concern for the future of the land culminates with a tongue-in-cheek statement “When all the trees have disappeared, we can all read Robert Frost poems / and feel sad.” (8) There are no traces of “Imperialist Nostalgia” in Sáenz’s poems, which are intense political reflections on a personal ecopoetics rooted firmly in the life and culture of the border experience.
Tragedy, simultaneously pedestrian and life altering, is a major theme throughout Sáenz’s collection. “The
Comforts of the Neighborhood” tells the tale of nineteen-year-old Juan Patricio Peraza, an unarmed and undocumented migrant worker that is mercilessly gunned down by Border Patrol agents in the poet’s hometown. Elsewhere, the poet writes of the breakdown of a marriage that results in the loss of his home and a beloved pet in the divorce settlement. But it is the capacity for deep feeling that bestows truth and beauty upon the poet and gives him the gift of song throughout The Book of What Remains.
At the heart of Sáenz’s collection are the long poems “The Ruined Cities of My Broken, Broken Heart” and “What I Have to Sing About.” In “The Ruined Cities…” the poet addresses himself:
You have been wandering
in the desert for forty years
searching for water
and a politics
and a theology
and a city you call home (55)
Seeking reconciliation in a life filled with ruin, the poet only arrives in “What I Have to Sing About” at the truth that “the road to happiness is a long fucking road trip” (108). There is no performative lament that encumbers Sáenz’s poetic searching, only a gesture towards the transfigurative act of redefining one’s own terms. Through a belief in certainty, goodness, and compassion, the poet arrives at an emancipatory poetics that rejects the “logic of slavery” (5) to realize the poignant epigram that opens the third section of The Book of What Remains: “You are what you remember.” (67)
September 28, 2015
So, I don't review poetry books very much. To be honest, I don't read poetry books very much. If you were to ask me why I decided to read this one, I don't know that I could give a very satisfying answer.
Some of Sáenz's poems are several pages long, but some are short enough to quote in a blog post. For example:
"Wallace Stevens's blackbirds come into my yard sometimes. I'm not sure
why they like my yard. I suspect they like my sprinklers
and the fact that I don't have a cat.
Even though the blackbirds have learned to live
in the desert, they have never acquired a taste for modernist poems."
This is a fairly representative example, aside from being shorter than usual. Sáenz's poetry (in this book, anyway) is definitely grounded in a particular geographic place (the Mexican-American border, mostly the American side of it). There is a series of short poems through it entitled "Meditations on living in the Desert". It isn't about Arabia or the Sahara.
I read this book before going to sleep every night for a few weeks. It is possible that this fact has colored my impression of them. However, I think it is not only for this reason that they reminded me of the times when you are awake at night, wondering about the past, or the future, or maybe the present, sometimes anxious but often contemplative. Sáenz's poetry usually caused me to do this, after I had put the book aside and turned out the light by my bed. Lie there, and think, and contemplate.
Not that he does not sometimes express some emotion beyond the contemplative. For example:
"The mesquite growing outside the window when I write
is in full bloom, its branches swaying in the breeze.
By August, the pods will hang heavy and fall
to the ground. When I was a boy I used to chew
on the pods pretending they were sugarcane. Maybe only boys do
such things. This summer, I am contemplating
a return to my old boyhood habit of chewing
on the pods. This will give me an excuse to spit
when I am reading the New York Times Book Review."
Well, Mr. Sáenz, it may be poor consolation to you, as I am no New York Times Book Review, but I very much enjoyed your book of poems. Please continue.
Some of Sáenz's poems are several pages long, but some are short enough to quote in a blog post. For example:
"Wallace Stevens's blackbirds come into my yard sometimes. I'm not sure
why they like my yard. I suspect they like my sprinklers
and the fact that I don't have a cat.
Even though the blackbirds have learned to live
in the desert, they have never acquired a taste for modernist poems."
This is a fairly representative example, aside from being shorter than usual. Sáenz's poetry (in this book, anyway) is definitely grounded in a particular geographic place (the Mexican-American border, mostly the American side of it). There is a series of short poems through it entitled "Meditations on living in the Desert". It isn't about Arabia or the Sahara.
I read this book before going to sleep every night for a few weeks. It is possible that this fact has colored my impression of them. However, I think it is not only for this reason that they reminded me of the times when you are awake at night, wondering about the past, or the future, or maybe the present, sometimes anxious but often contemplative. Sáenz's poetry usually caused me to do this, after I had put the book aside and turned out the light by my bed. Lie there, and think, and contemplate.
Not that he does not sometimes express some emotion beyond the contemplative. For example:
"The mesquite growing outside the window when I write
is in full bloom, its branches swaying in the breeze.
By August, the pods will hang heavy and fall
to the ground. When I was a boy I used to chew
on the pods pretending they were sugarcane. Maybe only boys do
such things. This summer, I am contemplating
a return to my old boyhood habit of chewing
on the pods. This will give me an excuse to spit
when I am reading the New York Times Book Review."
Well, Mr. Sáenz, it may be poor consolation to you, as I am no New York Times Book Review, but I very much enjoyed your book of poems. Please continue.
January 18, 2018
A glorious collection of poems about immigration, nostalgia, the past, the present, finding a home, then finding another home and celebrating culture even in the darkest of times when it seems like history is all that is left, The book of what remains, is yet another example of Saenz undying love for Mexico and its diaspora and the gifts it has given to him, even when news of death and dying consistently weigh on his mind. His words speak to every day life and while many are ripe with melancholy, so many still have a tone of strength and survival, that ultimately help make this a hopeful collection. My first poetry collection from this author, I love his free-verse, almost amorphous style, as his words dance along the page in a variety of formats from psalmic-esque meditations on nature to longer letters that seem ripped directly from a personal diary. He has such an honest voice that is so genuinely his own that I would be able to recognize his writing anywhere. In his writing Saenz gives us a blend of the literal and figurative, he contemplates situations that sound so far away yet that are happening just across the border and that keep him awake at nights. We see him as he thinks back to his marriage and now his divorce, glimpses of a hard childhood punctuated with happy moments, then to an adult life of relative contentment peppered with so many feelings of doubts, shames, regrets, and yearnings (particularity for an old dog who became a true companion and a garden that became his creation).
Not a big reader of poetry, I can't really offer commentary past the banal "I think this sounded beautiful", but for what it's worth I thought soo much of this collection read gloriously and found myself tabbing page after page. And though I'm not sure I've been converted into a poetry fan in general, I know that I am a complete fan of Saenz's poetry and will be sure to pick up more of their poetry offerings in the future. 4.25 stars out of 5 from me!
Not a big reader of poetry, I can't really offer commentary past the banal "I think this sounded beautiful", but for what it's worth I thought soo much of this collection read gloriously and found myself tabbing page after page. And though I'm not sure I've been converted into a poetry fan in general, I know that I am a complete fan of Saenz's poetry and will be sure to pick up more of their poetry offerings in the future. 4.25 stars out of 5 from me!
January 23, 2015
So yeah, I'm not a big poetry reader. I feel like I keep running across things written as poetry that...just, why? I get it stuck in my head that writing something as a poem is lazy somehow, because so many things I've read in verse just feel empty of all depth and emotion and beauty. But then there are people like this guy who make me get it.
I only read this because I've read two of Sáenz's books and thought they were fantastic and I got curious about what he could do with a poem. I really liked the first couple in this book and then I hit a section that felt a little too..."look at me, I'm writing poetry," you know? Like...weird spacing and line breaks and that annoyed me. But then all of a sudden I just couldn't put this book down and I read the whole rest of it all at once and felt like going back and reading it again almost.
I love the raw honesty of these poems. I love his thoughts on dogs and living in the desert.
I love the depth and the emotion and the beauty.
No, this collection isn't perfect, but I mean, this guy can write! And it's definitely reconfirmed my desire to read everything he's ever published. He's fast becoming one of my very favorite authors.
I only read this because I've read two of Sáenz's books and thought they were fantastic and I got curious about what he could do with a poem. I really liked the first couple in this book and then I hit a section that felt a little too..."look at me, I'm writing poetry," you know? Like...weird spacing and line breaks and that annoyed me. But then all of a sudden I just couldn't put this book down and I read the whole rest of it all at once and felt like going back and reading it again almost.
I love the raw honesty of these poems. I love his thoughts on dogs and living in the desert.
I love the depth and the emotion and the beauty.
No, this collection isn't perfect, but I mean, this guy can write! And it's definitely reconfirmed my desire to read everything he's ever published. He's fast becoming one of my very favorite authors.
April 5, 2013
I read this cover to cover this morning. There is much to love in this book. The longer pieces have a wonderful momentum impossible to convey in an excerpt. I enjoyed the voice and sense of humor in these pieces and how the shorter meditations on living in the desert were interspersed throughout the collection.
". . . Alive
is a place. Alive is the new word for home."
"When a man takes out the words
he has hidden in his heart for over fifty years
and gives them to another--
that is called a miracle."
After the Dying
"Sometimes I think my tongue is a desert praying for rain."
Meditation on Living in the Desert No. 17
Longer pieces that stood out to me:
Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon
Prayer in the Garden
After the Dying
Sin música no hay vida.
". . . Alive
is a place. Alive is the new word for home."
"When a man takes out the words
he has hidden in his heart for over fifty years
and gives them to another--
that is called a miracle."
After the Dying
"Sometimes I think my tongue is a desert praying for rain."
Meditation on Living in the Desert No. 17
Longer pieces that stood out to me:
Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon
Prayer in the Garden
After the Dying
Sin música no hay vida.
May 23, 2023
This book has been on my mind since I finished it back in March. Benjamin Alire Sáenz tapped into all the sensitivity, love, guilt, shame that lives within me. His words in this book for me personally, as a fellow queer Tejano man, were very healing to read. Definitely worth the read, especially for those who do not consider themselves big fans of poetry. Aristole and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is Sáenz most well known work, and the beauty that lives within that book is something you can find throughout all of Sáenz work and I encourage everyone to dive more into his bibliography.
Let's all say "fuck" together
Let's all say "fuck" together
August 6, 2011
Part poetry, part philosophy, mostly amazing. This is modern poetry at its best.
September 4, 2014
Stunning.
October 28, 2021
"...all collateral damage for someone's beautiful ideology."
March 27, 2018
Sabbath Book #10 for 2018.
People are irreducible, despite our best attempts to neaten them up, place them within certain borders, categorize them. One by one or in large groups, people keep surprising us in the way they respond to internal and external complexity.
The rewards of reading this collection of poems are found in the author's boldness to dwell near borders and speak from within transition points. These poems find him (and us, fellow readers, thanks to second-person narration) at the border between marriage and divorce, Mexico and the United States, stillness and storm, dreams and waking, faith and doubt.
Content-wise and thematically, this was a five-star collection for me. But the craft tripped me up. Returns to well-worn metaphors like gardens, cities, deserts, and plants shed little light. Some poems fell formally between essay and poem, seeming to lose some of the power of either form in the compromise.
Still, I enjoyed the collection, and I found it frequently rewarding. Highlights were "The Comforts of the Neighborhood," "Last Summer in the Garden," and "A True and Perfect Sound."
People are irreducible, despite our best attempts to neaten them up, place them within certain borders, categorize them. One by one or in large groups, people keep surprising us in the way they respond to internal and external complexity.
The rewards of reading this collection of poems are found in the author's boldness to dwell near borders and speak from within transition points. These poems find him (and us, fellow readers, thanks to second-person narration) at the border between marriage and divorce, Mexico and the United States, stillness and storm, dreams and waking, faith and doubt.
Content-wise and thematically, this was a five-star collection for me. But the craft tripped me up. Returns to well-worn metaphors like gardens, cities, deserts, and plants shed little light. Some poems fell formally between essay and poem, seeming to lose some of the power of either form in the compromise.
Still, I enjoyed the collection, and I found it frequently rewarding. Highlights were "The Comforts of the Neighborhood," "Last Summer in the Garden," and "A True and Perfect Sound."
September 1, 2022
i would classify the heartbreaks in #TheBookOfWhatRemains into two types: the incidental heartbreak, in ehich #BenjaminAlireSaenz writes of his divorce, lost friends and family, nostalgia; and the inherited heartbreak, that which belongs collectively and perpetually present: as an immigrant Mexican, a man whose life was mostly spent by the dessert, a family member, etc. that is not to say one is more painful than the other, if anything, we observe here the intermingling of the two. and their product is not a weak individual but somebody with a palpable spirit. someone #alive.
a lot of the pieces here function as essay types. Sáenz recalls his childhood and lost loves with the wisdom of a now fifty-year-old man who's already been through much. he applies current philosophies to memories, and then also questions his philosophies.
frequent subject matters cover inquisitions on #language, #TheDesert, #knowledge, #history, the like. really enjoyed his imagery and insights.
a lot of the pieces here function as essay types. Sáenz recalls his childhood and lost loves with the wisdom of a now fifty-year-old man who's already been through much. he applies current philosophies to memories, and then also questions his philosophies.
frequent subject matters cover inquisitions on #language, #TheDesert, #knowledge, #history, the like. really enjoyed his imagery and insights.
January 1, 2021
A collection of poems that is only 123-pages long, but so profound and so powerful, it warranted time to pause and ponder again and again. I kept wondering why human conscience has not shattered in a million pieces yet, and how did we become so adept at covering the cracks... Definitely includes poems I will want to re-read, and so will order my own copy before I return this one to the library!
February 7, 2018
Read this at the same time as _Inexplicable Logic_ and it was interesting to see all the overlap, even though the books are quite a few years apart.
Some of the longer prose-y poems are sermons of the best kind. I suppose that makes them homilies.
Some of the longer prose-y poems are sermons of the best kind. I suppose that makes them homilies.
Read
October 14, 2020Learned more about Benjamin
April 7, 2022
❤️❤️❤️
May 10, 2023
There's something about his voice - it just pulls me in. Usually with poetry I skip around, but I read this front to back. Captivating!
March 19, 2025
I loved this. My kind of poetry. No guessing, the man says what needs to be said… and it’s understandable.
August 28, 2019
4.5/5
this review will probably be painfully similar to my last review of Benjamin Alire Saénz’s poetry. i guess when reading i really don’t know what to say other than that this was beautiful/powerful/emotive. but honestly, when I’m reading his works, that feels like enough. i want to read everything he’s ever published, i think that speaks for itself. i think i love his poetry so much partially because i don’t have to understand poetry to love it. I don’t have to deeply analyze it to feel how much emotion it depicts, i don’t have to pace myself, i just have to read and feel. i’m rating it 5 stars because it feels closer to 5 than to 4 (still waiting for the day that Goodreads allows half-stars!!!) it was really more like 4.5 in my mind, there were some sections i was kind of meh on, and i wasn’t into the formatting of some of the poetry. i loved hearing about the desert. i never really hear anything about the desert, what's that about? note to self: read more books featuring the desert.
5 quotes I really liked:
“Every night the dream. Every dawn, the waking to that profound state of sadness and solitude. Always you rushed out into the yard and wept at the sign of the honeysuckles in bloom and the blueness of the sky. Imagine a world without the sweetness of jasmine and honeysuckles? Imagine a world without the perfect breeze, without the perfect blue, that only a sky in June can give? Imagine the whole world a desert.”
“You’ve lived long enough now to love what you have lost. You have to be careful. You don’t want to live in the past. You have said this a thousand times: you detest nostalgia. Death makes preservationists of us all.”
“Then, the moment of panic leaves you. And how you smile and breathe in and out, breathe in and out, relax, because the meaning of life is not to be found in the moments of insomnia and insanity. Never mind about the rats yes you smile and promise yourself that in the morning you will wake—“
“I am remembering the first book of poems I wrote. That was a long time ago. I used to know what poetry was, what it did, how it was written. I wrote something about the Navajo, how eight thousand starving souls were forced to cross the desert on foot. Human history is even crueler than the desert.”
“Only someone with deep faith can be that hurt. And I’m sorry I didn’t know how to tell him that. I think I’ll keep that image of him forever. Listen to me. Everywhere I go, there is all this hurt. I walk away from one world and walk into another. But everywhere there are faces. The cities of the world are teeming with arms and hands that are reaching out to touch. There is no escaping the pain. There is no escaping the beauty.”
February 19, 2017
Each time I read B. Alire Saenz I love him more and more. I am so exciting for his new two books that will be released this year. I am sure they will be as great as all his novels/poetry books.
He can explain imposible things and feelings with a very easy and understandable way of writing, and I think this is the nearest thing to magic that we can found.
For those who are thinking about reading that book: do it, you won't regret it!
(¡Gente no angloparlante, tiene un lenguaje bastante fácil de entender, así que animaos a leerlo también!)
He can explain imposible things and feelings with a very easy and understandable way of writing, and I think this is the nearest thing to magic that we can found.
For those who are thinking about reading that book: do it, you won't regret it!
(¡Gente no angloparlante, tiene un lenguaje bastante fácil de entender, así que animaos a leerlo también!)
October 1, 2011
I did not read every poem in this book, but for now, I am finished with it.
I really loved Saenz' poems about the desert. They made me think about deserts more than I would have any reason to. Especially given that we have had enough rain lately for me to believe that deserts no longer exist.
I had a harder time with Saenz' political poems. They just did not strike a chord with me right now. I plan to come back to this book at another time.
One thing poems have taught me is that you need to approach them at the right time for both you and the poem.
I really loved Saenz' poems about the desert. They made me think about deserts more than I would have any reason to. Especially given that we have had enough rain lately for me to believe that deserts no longer exist.
I had a harder time with Saenz' political poems. They just did not strike a chord with me right now. I plan to come back to this book at another time.
One thing poems have taught me is that you need to approach them at the right time for both you and the poem.
March 29, 2013
I wanted to like this more than I did. Some of the poems are really wonderful, but others seem too self-conscious. Also, it may be a small thing but I hated the fact that every line began with a capital letter, even when that didn't make sense. That shouldn't happen with poetry.
July 18, 2010
I am bad at judging poetry, but there were things in this I liked.
October 28, 2015
Took me months to finish this tiny book, but I made it through. His long poems are kind of like stream-of-consciousness stories, which I'm not very fond of. But his short poems were pretty good.
January 17, 2017
Way too political and sanctimonious for my taste. That's "what remains" for me after reading this book.
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