Review by Choice Review
A modest offering of 37 sober and straightforward poems by a native Argentinian who is now an exile from Chile. The subtitle may only suggest the horrors Dorfman recounts: the cramming of live rats into vaginas ("it's God's truth") or the stringing up of political prisoners by means of the Brazilian pau d'arara. A woman whose son "has been missing/ since May 8/ of last year" is overjoyed to hear of her son's cries of torture, for at least she knows now that he is alive. A man who weeps freely at the close of "General Hospital" but remains dry-eyed and unmoved as he learns that slum children are starving and his friends have been maimed by torture fears for his sanity. "Two Times Two" speculates on the number of steps that the blindfolded prisoner counts out for himself: "oh if you get past eighty/ there's only one place/ they can take you." The subject matter of these poems is undeniably powerful; indeed, the author worries that accidental rhymes or rhythms might distract attention from the horrors. But judgment on poetic criteria may be more exacting; lines such as "Children, the only thing in this world you can't fix/ is taking the life of something that by some miracle/ breathes" may strike some readers as too preachy to be poetic. Nonetheless the book is recommended for its content, and it may be of interest to readers of Dorfman's Widows (CH, Oct '83) and The Last Song of Manuel Sendero (CH, Oct '87). J. Shreve Allegany Community College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean exile, writes protest poetry of ardor and eloquence that has been read at rallies and broadcast worldwide. Direct, restrained, and uncomplicated, it captures what it's like to live where people routinely disappear, endure torture, and die; what it's like to know how many steps ``from the cell / to that room'': ``oh if you get past eighty / there's only one place / they can take you, / there's only one place, / there's only one place.'' Last Waltz in Santiago is part of a record that must be kept: ``Should we forget the hollow of the torn-out tongue? / If it is dark shall we cease to praise the rising sun?'' JS. 861 [OCLC] 87-23020
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The Chilean author who taught us all How to Read Donald Duck here reminds us in a thumping collection of protest poetry that Chile is a country where dissidents continue to vanish without a trace, leaving behind torn families who cannot decide whether to hope that their loved ones are alive, or deadand beyond the possibility of torture. Eschewing political rhetoric, Dorfman adopts the personae of parents, spouses and children who, never even breathing the words ``Pinochet'' or ``junta,'' long for knowledge of the fates of the Disappeared. Similarly, Dorfman describes the helpless isolation of the exile in two consecutive poems that both conclude: ``I hang up the phone and begin to call the newspapers one by one to give them the name of the companero who has been arrested, the name of the companero I don't know.'' In the tradition of Latin American protest literature, this is a call to conscience that appeals to our most basic human instinctsthe love of mother for child, wife for husband. (March) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This slim volume of ``torture and resilience'' poetry by Chilean exile Dorfman is heavy going, but necessary reading if any portion of the human race is ever to be moved to action against the unblushing brutality of some Latin American regimes. The poet asks forgiveness lest any accidental rhymes or rhythms creep into his work to detract from the starkness of his descriptions of electric shock, the stuffing of live rats into the vagina of a woman, or a mother's gratitude when she hears about her son's screams of torture, knowing at last that he is at least alive. For most poetry collections.Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
