Description Poetry.
That cruel game is played at the level of one\'s skin, and the wound is everywhere: \'My skin / is chosen / My skin like a tattoo / like stigmata, like sin.\' This book is a fable for our time."--Paul Hoover "Rene Vaz opens his powerful new collection THE Planet OF THE Dead by stating this truth: \'We are required to harm others.\' Startlingly, he sets this dictum of damage not in today\'s war zones, but in art\'s supposed sanctuary, the MFA classroom--\'if a classmate called the police, I would be the first one shot and still // all around me people are dying // one typo // one typo is all it takes and you.
It\'s more than double-consciousness; a policeman\'s eyes can burn straight through you.
In the post-Ferguson world, nothing is quite itself.
His mother calls him an \'american sun.\' But this sun\'s body is \'born to serve, to knead, to plow, to pick, to push, to care, to crawl, to work, to die.\' The alienation is so complete that the Planet of the dead, Pluto, becomes a metaphor for home.
A key poet of the emerging Latino generation that needs to be read now."--Alejandro Murguia "Imagine a social reality in which one can say, \'Your hands were up the moment you were born.\' This is the case of the speaker in Rene Vaz\' compelling first book THE Planet OF THE DEAD].
This is a tense chronicle--a memoir in poetic form.
Writing against empire, Rene Vaz is one of our warriors returned."--Tongo Eisen-Martin "From its intriguing title THE Planet OF THE Dead to its kaleidoscopic vision of life in 21st century USA, Vaz delivers urgent poems for urgent times.
Despite an empire\'s bullet and paper enthusiasm, the writer announces a cosmic domain. "THE Planet OF THE Dead is teeth being cut in an intimate frame.
Forced to flee a violent, inhospitable America, the poems in THE Planet OF THE Dead hold an unforgiving mirror, forcing us to take an unwavering look at our current police state, proving there is no safety in the classroom or in the streets.
Latino/Latina Studies.
Description Poetry
