En El Norte / Soy del Sur - by José Felipe Alvergue (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Poetry that considers migration and identity through formal experimentation with sonnets.

José Felipe Alvergue's en el norte/soy del sur, which translates to "in the north I am of the south," is an exploration into the limits of the American sonnet, one that seeks to establish a stable sense of place, while opening vistas at each turn. Stitching together multiple sonnets into what he calls "sonnet essays," Alvergue rides their turns--or "voltas"--that are guided by memories and photographs of his family's migratory history between El Salvador and the United States.

The resulting text is a story of human geography that considers the coordinates of a long, continuous thought about what it means to be "of a place" as a defining characteristic of identity, when one is also "in a place" that sets strict limits on the political and historical potential of im/migrants. A deeply human documentary work that delves into one family's migration across the hemisphere, en el norte/soy del sur hopes to give shape to the collective and often amorphous history of migration in the face of narratives that peddle spectacularized distillation and essentialism.

Review Quotes

"'I fear I can't make/ myself small/ enough' writes Alvergue in his haunting poetry collection, en el norte / soy del sur. This postnational, postmemory work traces the capillaries of generational trauma, how survival embeds itself into life's tissues and choreography. For one Salvadoran family, migration to the United States morphs from hope to the realization that 'the world is an emergency.' However, even among so much tragedy, there is always dancing and other miracles that refuse to be extinguished. en el norte soy del sur is a collection I will revisit again and again."--Gustavo Barahona-López, author of "Foundation"

"You can read poems about transgenerational trauma to make the room hush. But these days, who can tell the difference between reverence and the anticipation of ghosts hungry
to consume culture as absolution? Alvergue refuses to be anyone's professional victim. Through lyric compression, archival juxtaposition, and formal innovation, Alvergue folds the page to gather image and document, memory and history, tissue and terror. Alvergue's uncompromising labor elevates poetry to the register of his grandmother's laughter entering the body like a 'rhizomatic stent/ letting the interstices fill/with blood.' Go forth absolved of nothing but enlivened, ghosts no more."--Farid Matuk, author of "Moon Mirrored Indivisible"

"'There's something about poetry, ' writes Alvergue, in what could be a thesis for en el norte / soy del sur, 'that / is synesthetic in a way that / answers the call of felt history / begging to be organized." How to know, hold, and feel one's lineage when patchy memories, photographs, and misinformation are up against the murderous state of (post)coloniality? This thoughtful collection grapples beautifully with the unanswerable questions of war, displacement, and generational trauma: "Chronic stress eats away at bodies" rues the speaker, caught between assimilation and inheritance. Alvergue's deeply intelligent union of theory and embodied feeling expertly guides readers through the affective territory of loss and recuperation."--Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, author of "Negative Money"

About the Author

José Felipe Alvergue is the author of four books, including his work of autotheory purplish: poetry anger publics and the poetry collections scenery and precis, the latter of which was also published by Omnidawn.