Chicago Review of Books, Must-Read Books for March Borzutzky handles history as liquid, the past a wave forever crashing into the present. . . . an urgently contemporary project, rejecting the pretense of retrospective distance in order to mourn from within chaos. Hannah Aizenman, The New Yorker A panoramic and formally various investigation of the evils of capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy. . . . Borzutzkys arresting writing sings and stuns as it addresses difficult, painful truths. Publishers Weekly, starred review The poets voice has echoes of Waldman and Olson. The poems are at times conversational and incantatory. . . . Its essentially a way of working through the violence thats persistent today, while still trying to acknowledge a specific terrible act of violence. . . . critical and ambitious, most damning in its understatement and reflection. Joseph Houlihan, Chicago Review of Books This is a broken god of a book. . . . Borzutzky dares to writeto confrontthe unspeakable: the atrocities of capital. In his nightmarish sixth collection of poetry, Borzutzkys poems continue to murmur the ghost languages and unimaginable cruelties of our world: its surveillance tactics, its tactical warfare, its caged babies, its corrupt bankers, its private sectors, its privatized air, its foreclosed mouths. These are not just poems of compelling witness, but unimaginable, unforgettable songs of grief. Paul Cunningham, Action Books Stunning. . . . Global capitalist ironies become punchlines but also give way to protests, from Chile to Chicago and beyond. Urayoan Noel, The Latinx Project Borzutzky, the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry winner for his collection The Performance of Becoming Human, writes in a bare and immediate style free of artifice. The imagery is clear and direct. . . . The simplebut not simplisticwriting, pulls you in. David Rullo, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle Sprawling in its rage, from the concentration camps at the border to police violence to the scourge of mass shootings, this collection uses language to identify the unspeakable. Chicago Review of Books These poems apply a clarity of conscience and language to the surreal nightmare born of white supremacy and zero-sum-game capitalism. Borzutzkylike Reznikoff and Rukeyser, and Chilean poet Raul Zurita, whom he has translatedreminds us that poetry is and has long been a tool of reckoning and refusal, a way of singing for what has been stolen, slaughtered, stifled. These are the songs we must learn to sing. Tracy K. Smith Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 is a montage for the systemic torque of our bodies. With stunning alacrity, Daniel Borzutzky emboldens a list of images into reality, as a broken witnessphenomenology of the murmuring poets guilt of this innocent lung. Given rage to clean away the moral fiber of a culture led astray, we venture into the understructure of massacre with a book as a torch, providing humanity its navigation. Among these pages, emotional and spiritual selves gather to find cadence in perspective. We break we are broken we are, transformation meets self-creation, daring subject to engage and render. Fractures of society are given multiple angles, to form our own entry pointseach perception its own formation of equanimity. Line by line, we repeat the prayers that might heal those we love, ourselves included. Borzutzky offers us a testament to the written breathto hear poetrys fault line, running through each of us. Edwin Torres, author of Xoeteox: the infinite word object I cant do anything but bow. This is lacerating work. Achy Obejas Praise for Daniel Borzutzky Winner of the 2016 National Book Award Finalist for the 2019 Griffin International Poetry Prize Borzutzkys intelligence and learning are formidable.Los Angeles Times Violent, perverse, tender.Eileen Myles, Poetry Foundation According to Borzutzky, we are all responsible for the current state of the union.Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR Through repetition and obsessive accumulation, every phrase leaps off the page, begging to be spoken aloud, or shouted. The work is as personally conflicted as Berrymans, as stealthy as Celans, and as openly political as Ginsbergs.National Book Award citation This is one of contemporary poetrys most cogent documents of humanity and suffering in the 21st century.Publishers Weekly
