Karankawa [Paperback]

Winner of the 2014 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry
Selected by Joy Harjo

Karankawais a collection that explores some of the ways in which we (re)construct our personal histories. Rich in family narratives, myths, and creation stories, these are poems that investigate passage—dying, coming out, transforming, being born—as well as the gaps that also reside in our stories, for, as Rocha suggests, the opportunity to create myths is provided by great silences. Much like the Karankawa Indians whose history works in omissions,Karankawareconfigures such spaces, engaging with the burden and freedom of memory in order to rework and recontextualize private and public mythologies. First and last, these are poems that honor our griefs and desires, for they keep alive the very things we cannot possess.

“These are the poems of a new fire. Raw fire makes a unique trail as it burns. They are fueled by a passionate, lyrical surrealism. This is a border politics kind of surrealism, emerging from a poetic sensibility in which there are no borders. This collection in essence embodies a fresh kind of creation story emerging from the Americas. It’s like reading Rimbaud for the first time. We are struck by an unabashed presence of a fearless singer.”
—Joy Harjo, judge

“There is feast enough here in Rocha’s language, its sensuousness, its sass, its inventiveness, to delight any reader. These poems, rooted in the body and in Rocha’s Texas landscape, imaginatively explore the stories of our origins and the constant transformation of the self. ‘In your history, a tree is rebuilt,’ she writes. A compelling and memorable book.”
—Beckian Fritz Goldberg

“Iliana Rocha’sKarankawais radically honest poetry, never beyond belief, its clarities and mysteries mutually deepening.  In these diverse millennial visions arrive a fresh verlƒ1