Kirjahaku

A 4-part poetry collection that explores women's roles in familial dynamics, immigration, and El Salvador's civil war while reflecting on the death of the poet's father A National Poetry Series winner, selected by the celebrated poet Reginald Dwayne Betts When COVID-19 broke and the United States closed the border to travel, Alexandra Lytton Regalado was separated from family back in El Salvador. She wrote Relinquenda entirely during lockdown as a meditation on cancer, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community. The central part of the collection focuses on her father during his 6-year struggle with cancer and considers how his stoicism, alcoholism, and hermitage might serve as mirror and warning. In contrast, she dedicates other poems to what it means for daughters, mothers, and wives to care for another as reflected in her relationships with the men in her life. Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami, Florida and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between United States and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country's decade-long civil war. In a lyrical and often bilingual voice, Regalado explores the impermanence and the body, communication and inarticulation, and the need to let go in order to heal regrets.

Winner of the 2017 St. Lawrence Book Award."Regalado's elegant debut, MATRIA, introduces us to a world where 'leaf-cutter ants... could easily strip the lime sapling bare in the course of one summer night.' These poems are so attuned to the intricacies of violence and desire, the pulse and rhythms of bringing new life into this world, and the cleaving that follows. I'm so grateful to hear this brave and beautiful new voice, a mighty force to be reckoned with-one who promises us, 'Yes, I will be the hunter, I will start / fires... their faces will pale in my darkness.'"-Aimee Nezhukumatathil"Reading Alexandra Regalado's majestic first book, MATRIA, I stumble back through the decades searching for a poet whose debut feels as deeply realized, as richly imagined-TracyK. Smith, Carolyn Forch , Robert Hass? There is such a surfeit of life and language in this book, which ranges geographically from Florida to El Salvador, and thematically across art and identity, class and power, motherhood and sisterhood, life and death. MATRIA reminds us that words will never be deterred by walls, and nothing enriches American culture more than the crossing of borders."-Campbell McGrath"Truly remarkable poetry draws new connections between the emotional, physical, and psychological landscapes our lives move through. This is especially true of MATRIA, a stunning collection by Alexandra Lytton Regalado, who moves us among and between the intersections of motherhood and childhood, womanhood and country-hood. With arresting language full of grace and empathy, these poems dimension the uidity and complexity of these relationships as both witness and the witnessed, mother and child, native and foreigner, in both English and Spanish."-Richard Blanco"An electrifying attentiveness to terror and to beauty animates MATRIA, a collection that interrogates the eternal bonds of family and the unending bloodshed in El Salvador. Vivid images and precise phrasing transform remembered and witnessed events into lyrical acts that astonish. Rain becomes 'obsidian blades' then a 'rough beard' against skin. Salvatruchas drowning another girl in Lake Coatepeque become mountains. Alexandra Lytton Regalado, like Rainer Maria Rilke, reminds us that tenderness and brutality live side-by-side. MATRIA is a powerful and unforgettable debut."-Eduardo C.Corral