Keynote
The astonishing second collection by the author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize
Book Title
Guillotine
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- Longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry
Finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry
Poem Excerpt
Apá, dying is boring. To pass las horas,
I carve
our last name
all over my body.
I try to recall the taste of Pablo’s sweat.
Whiskey, no.
Wet dirt, sí.
I stuff English
into my mouth, spit out chingaderas.
Have it your way.
Home of the Whopper.
Run
for the border. ¡Aguas! The mirror
betrayed us.
—from “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel”
I carve
our last name
all over my body.
I try to recall the taste of Pablo’s sweat.
Whiskey, no.
Wet dirt, sí.
I stuff English
into my mouth, spit out chingaderas.
Have it your way.
Home of the Whopper.
Run
for the border. ¡Aguas! The mirror
betrayed us.
—from “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel”
Body
Guillotine traverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayal’s lingering scars, the border itself—great distances in which violence and yearning find roots. Through the voices of undocumented immigrants, border patrol agents, and scorned lovers, award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral writes dramatic portraits of contradiction, survival, and a deeply human, relentless interiority. With extraordinary lyric imagination, these poems wonder about being unwanted or renounced. What do we do with unrequited love? Is it with or without it that we would waste away?
In the sequence “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,” with Corral’s seamless integration of Spanish and English, poems curve around the surfaces upon which they are written, overlapping like graffiti left by those who may or may not have survived crossing the border. A harrowing second collection, Guillotine solidifies Corral’s place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.
In the sequence “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel,” with Corral’s seamless integration of Spanish and English, poems curve around the surfaces upon which they are written, overlapping like graffiti left by those who may or may not have survived crossing the border. A harrowing second collection, Guillotine solidifies Corral’s place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.
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About the Author
Credit: Wilton Barnhardt
Praise
- “Corral nimbly bridges the personal and political, evoking themes of migration to ask what it means to be unwanted.”—New York Times Book Review, New & Noteworthy
- “Brief, pungent, perfectly crafted lines create a nightmarish atmosphere surrounding border crossings. . . . The images rushing down these pages in tightly paced cadence take readers on a haunting journey, with Corral’s impressionism delivering more than taut realism ever could.”—Library Journal, starred review
- “Devastating and electrifying. . . . Shot through with the dark realities of human tragedy, Corral’s latest is a virtuosic compendium of grief."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
- “No matter what his subject, Corral is a gifted storyteller, precise and dizzying with his imagery.”—The Millions
