Guillotine: Poems [Paperback]

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY

The astonishing second collection by the author ofSlow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize

Guillotinetraverses desert landscapes cut through by migrants, the grief of loss, betrayals lingering scars, the border itselfgreat 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 Water Station Barrels, with Corrals 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,Guillotinesolidifies Corrals place in the expanding ecosystem of American poetry.

Corral nimbly bridges the personal and political, evoking themes of migration to ask what it means to be unwanted.The New York Times Book Review, New & Noteworthy

The lyricism of this writing pulls us toward wonder, before, an instant later, documentary fact returns us to horror.The New Yorker

No matter what his subject, Corral is a gifted storyteller, precise and dizzying with his imagery.The Millions

Each poem exists as its own small story, using Corral's gift for imaginatl#-