ABOUT THIS BOOK

Born in the south of Chile, but living and writing in the U.S. for the past thirty years, Raúl Barrientos eludes the easy categories: Latin American, Latino, American. All of these, and more. Yet always a poet, turning whatever he touches into startling imagery and gritty, enduring verse. These poems trace a trajectory from the 1973 coup d'etat in Chile to a difficult end-of-millennium in Manhattan. They give the reader a privileged view of a long and continually productive career in poetry—and a glimpse of the life behind it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Raúl Barrientos was born in Puerto Montt, a small town in the south of Chile. He studied at the Unversidad de Concepcion, where he later became professor of theater. After the 1973 military coup he left Chile for the United States and pursued advanced studies in Spanish-American literatures at the University of Pennsylvania and SUNY-Stony Brook. He has published nine volumes of poetry.

REVIEWS

"It is easy to sense the incantatory, nightmarish linguistic fire. . . . The publication of [Corriendo bajo la lluvia] is an occasion for optimism in terms of restoring lost dialogues and creating new ones at a time when, more than ever, perhaps, one can appreciate the therapeutic value of the poetic word as it joins readers from different generations and places in its secret, mycelial life."

— Steven F. White, Review Magazine

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
From Historic Account of the Kingdom of the Night (1982)
     Dark Love
     Pure Breezes Cross You Too
     On the Executions
     Dies Irae
     With a Fistful of Sand I have Lived on the Steps
     Negro Spiritual

From Ephemeral's Foot (1985)
     Crazy Bird at Summer's End / Outline of the Poem
     Knife
     Southward Pursuit
     Halloween
     Words in Memory of You
     Piano with Dagger Before a Mirror
     Bells
     Rooster
     Under the Same Sun
     "It Would Be Better, Reallly, If They Just Ate It All and We Ended This"
     "The Found His Armor in Lyons, Kansas. Assoc. Press"
     Stephanie
     Ruins
     Triptych: 1. Revealed (With Echo)
                      2. Sunset
                      3. Calm Before Rain

From Book of Images (1989)
     Hard Times
     Sunday
     Cellophane
     The River
     Those Crazy Bells (1932)
     When Fred Astaire Danced Into My Life
     The Witnesses
     Shoes
     The Public Life of Manhattan Pigeons
     The Circus
     And What Did They Do to the Strike?
     All that Jazz

From Monarch (1997)
     I'm the One Who Flies and You the Monarch
     Where to, Ariadne?
     The Messenger Was Carrying a Lamp
     Summer Concert
     Aquarium
     I, Who Came Running Back Through the Rain

From Neon Key (1998)
     Under the Bridge
     Renovation
     Ulysses the Blind
     Night
     Day after Day
     Bolero
     Lioness
     Penelope

Notes
The author
The editor and translators