The Lust of Unsentimental Waters [Paperback]

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Rosa Alcalá's poems dwell in the liminal space between the personal and the political—poems built on the idea that 'the world exists,' and that work to define the metaphysical and ephemeral architectures of origin, migration, nationalism, and loss. Rosa Alcalá is uncompromising, wry, and brutal: all of the qualities that significant poetic works of cultural criticism require. —Carmen Giménez Smith

'I want to know how everything changes with the price of admission,' writes Rosa Alcalá in her extraordinary new book. These poems begin at the exact point where 'the fundamental concepts of elementary navigation / become unhinged,' as they invent a new way of talking: developing tenuous and affectionate convergences between desire and fear, love and anger—even sex, money, tradition, and the history of appearances. It's all here. What fascinates Alcalá is precisely what animates her poetry: 'the mess of lost power,' compelled at once by contradiction and complicity, yet cleaving with an unsentimental eye and an inspiring wit. —Joshua Marie Wilkinson