Adelante

Description

Poetry. ADELANTE examines the relationships between place and loss, juxtaposing the death of a father with the suffering and resilience of the natural world. These poems use this juxtaposition to explore how images conceal and repurpose each other: a cigar is snuffed inside a conch, butterflies dangle from bullets lodged in tree trunks, and fingertips transform into the coconut they carry. Central to this exploration, the poems in ADELANTE investigate the imagination, demonstrating how such recursive salvaging influences our interactions with the world around us. For example, "The Visible World" begins by considering how passengers on a turbulent airplane find comfort in different things--charm bracelets, a butterfly wing, prayer--which leads to the speaker re-imagining her father's death. These poems further explore place, loss, and imagination by investigating the conflicts between commercial pursuits and the natural world--what happens when the real alligator wanders onto the animatronic beach.