Not Go Away Is My Name

Starred review from April 20, 2020
This striking 12th collection from Ríos (A Small Story About the Sky) draws its energy from the space between active resistance and sturdy persistence. “I will wait, said the wood, and it did,” begins one poem, while this patience is transformed into a more explicit political stance in another, from which the collection takes its title: “You win. You have always won./ All I can do is not go away.// Not go away is my name.” A vibrant attention to color animates even simple descriptions—the poem “A Quiet Evening in August” begins with the observation that “it is dusk. Earth eats the dragon./ The singed edges of sky orange// Fire in red smoke plumes everywhere,/ Lavender, finally, lavender and gray// The great bruise of the moment in the sky,/ Weak yellow smudges framing the end.” This work captures Ríos’s singular voice at its best.

Starred review from June 1, 2020

"We plant seeds in the ground/ and dreams in the sky" writes National Book Award finalist R�os in his 12th collection (after A Small Story About the Sky), offering lines that encapsulate the broad reach of his lyrical scope, from the earthy and personal to the metaphysical and mystical. Rooting his poems in the desert landscape and the working people of the Southwest, R�os internalizes the haunting myths and vivid sensations of the borderland ("It is not a place out there but a place in here") in order to conjure "The vocabulary of what is good here," the "momentary dictionary, / the constant act of discovery" that defines the engaged human consciousness. The poet's long lines and short stanzas move at a thoughtful, considered pace, conveying not only the visual beauty of his surroundings ("the yellow/ Everything of the paloverdes, their fallen thousand happy yellow pieces of light,") but also the region's hidden, sometimes difficult histories ("Where they crossed does not exist on any map"). VERDICT R�os's poems of memory and aspiration are small masterpieces of clarity and caring, "Hard at the work of being human." A richly hopeful collection that seems especially vital now. [See "Versifying," LJ 1/20.]--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2020
The poems in the latest collection in a literary career spanning over 40 years are composed entirely in couplets, and scented with nostalgia for a childhood in the Sonoran desert, including memories of salted watermelon, Celia Cruz, and beisbol (baseball) at the Mexican border. R�os displays a characteristic range in subject matter, depicting desert flora with inimitable precision (such as the saguaro cactus, "that curious Liberace candelabrum"), speaking from the perspective of the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona ("I will wait"), and delivering a playful, folkloric ode to kitchen utensils ("Potato peeler, tough guy, two knives perfectly wielded"). Most notably, R�os portrays time in bright, unexpected measures, such as the "great, green whale of hot summer nights," "the deep Thursday water of an afternoon dream," and the months of September and October, which "have become doctors' waiting rooms" before the chill of November. An engaging mix of moods and tempos, the formal limitations of these verses prompt the longtime poet laureate of Arizona to flex newfound creative skills.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)