Wars. Threesomes. Drafts. & Mothers

by Heriberto Yépez

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. WARS. THREESOMES. DRAFTS. & MOTHERS, by Heriberto Yépez, plays with September 11th. It's a book on war. A book of hate toward the United States. A book of love toward ghosts. Several stories are triggered around the war against Iraq, among them the story of a couple of brothers involved in several love triangles. This is a love-drug-passion-esquizophrenic experiment that involves you till the end. This is a book made of orgasms and quotes. This is a book on writing in the age of Empire. This is a book on the deep meaning of 'United-States'.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published January 30, 2007

About the author

Nació en Tijuana, Baja California, el 2 de septiembre de 1974. Ensayista, novelista, poeta y traductor. Estudió Filosofía en la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, en donde se ha desempeñado como profesor de teoría crítica en la Escuela de Artes y la de Humanidades.

Traductor de Jerome Rothenberg. Ha colaborado en publicaciones mexicanas y estadounidenses como Alforja, Cross Cultural Poetics, El Ángel del Reforma, Generación, La Jornada Semanal, La Tempestad, Rattapallax, Replicante, Shark, y Tripwire. Becario del FOECA-Baja California, como creador con trayectoria, 2002, y del FONCA, 2003-2004. Primer Lugar en el Concurso Regional de Poesía del Noroeste. Primer Lugar en el Concurso Literario del Noroeste de Ensayo. Primer Lugar en el Concurso Estatal de Ensayo 2000. Premio Nacional de Ensayo Abigael Bohórquez 2001. Premio Estatal de Periodismo Cultural 2004. Mención Honorífica en el Concurso Binacional Bilingüe de Poesía Pellicer-Fros/Frontera-Ford, de la Fundación Ford, 1998. Premio Nacional de Ensayo Literario Malcom Lowry 2009 por Sin ninguna palabra entre nosotros. Viajes, vestigios y visiones mexicanas de Jerome Rothenberg.

Source: http://www.elem.mx/autor/datos/1718

Reviews

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange but incredible story. The more it sits with me, the more I want to use his technique to write my stories in the future. He infuses the political issues of America with realist fiction (romance/drama) while also being meta (describing the story he is telling) and always keeps you on your toes. It's a story you want to keep re-reading, to see how he's done this and then keep getting deeper. He's a poet as well so the lyrical quality and repetition provides a nice flow to the prose as well. A delight, truly.

[Holly Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yepez, in his sparse English output, is wildly confrontational and flippantly allusive. It's like, an aggressive mixture of sprezzatura and machismo that may or may not put you off within the first couple of paragraphs. This collection is a series of prose poems about sex and identity that is perhaps a bit appropriative in terms of gender and perhaps not appropriative enough in terms of class, however, it ends in a scene of post-9/11 jeremiad and euphoric gay incest that is as strange and beautiful a cap to a collection of poetry as anything I've read in the past, uh, I don't know, week? In any case, it's an exciting collection, with a lot of provocative, smart, and funny bits, but with somewhat less substance, maybe, than attitude, and a stance that is, if not heteronormative than at least casually phallocentric, and a commitment to psychoanalysis that might strike some readers as retrograde.

[Tlaloc Raviella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, amongst other points, offers a genuine interpretation of what the rest of the world thinks about the USA policing the world (saving the world) (creating and extinguishing wars, leaving only ashes behind a trail of blood and misery)

Yepez, from his point of view, a citizen of border town called Tijuana; writes from a place that acts not as a border but as a mirror to the brutality reflected and inflicted above us, from the "other side" of the mirror, to the north of us, border next to us, nerveless far; far as Baghdad is from Washington, united by a war that ignited at the start of every century leading to the XXI, united also by this book, written in 2007 but meant to be read now and in the years to come, to further understand the desperate cries of mothers during wars.

[Melisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heriberto Yepez is the most exciting poet I have read (probably) ever. This is his first book written in English. He has written 20-something books in Spanish, and he's in his mid-thirties. He is doing work that is unpresedented.

[Ippolit · Rating 5 out of 5]

brothers, mothers, 9/11, event horizon, becoming-, lots of Deleuze, writing, translation, Mexico, Iraq ... there's a lot in this lil book!
Highly referential, ironic, but also has some interesting things to suggest
I guess it's about "couples"

[Amanda Davidson]

sometimes a character can be a person, a country and a piece of architecture all at once. i heard that yepez does that here.