Among the Angels of Memory

February 1, 2007
Adult/High School-This is an expanded and newly translated version of a privately published book, "Angels of Memory". Agosin's poetry is a cathartic cry against the Holocaust and present-day wars and atrocities. The writer begins with a short prose introduction to the story the poems will tell of her grandmother's journey from the Nazis of Vienna to her new home in Chile. Immediately well oriented, readers are quickly drawn in through the poems' intensely personal and touching tone. Her deceased grandmother speaks plainly through her granddaughter as Agosin admits: "I take dictation./And you, on the other side of the words, /in the resonant clarity of light, /smile." So intimate, the poems seem to whisper, as in, "telling you this story/distresses me, /I can only say it in a poem/as I am unable to tell it to anyone." The bilingual format creates an additional sense of closeness, allowing readers to experience the poet's pieces in her native tongue. Her poems are sometimes angry, sometimes tenderhearted, always brutally honest, and their accessible intensity will capture teen readers."Joy Murphy, Berkeley Public Library, CA"

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