#8 Santa Fe New Mexican: Review & Interview

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/books/sent-back-by-the-gods-ana-castillos-my-book-of-the-dead/article_2695adfa-2d08-11ec-b793-47a32e75b4c2.html

““There must have been poems in my head — albeit dark ones. They were just coming out as drawings,” she says. “

https://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/books/sent-back-by-the-gods-ana-castillos-my-book-of-the-dead/article_2695adfa-2d08-11ec-b793-47a32e75b4c2.html

“Tyehimba Jess, who wrote leadbelly (2005) and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Olio (2016). He told Castillo that he was studying Spanish and wanted to try translation. He worked on “Gotas caían en el techo” (“Drops Fell on the Roof”), a series of gently rhyming couplets about the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida…

“’Ana Castillo is a poet who shaped my understanding of the boundlessness of poetry,’ Jess says, describing her writing as fearless and graceful. “It was an honor to translate a poem for her, to inhabit her lingual landscape — and emerge on the other side with another lesson from her pages.”

“… I’m sent back by the gods, who say ‘not so fast, you’ve got some more work to do.’ Instead of going on to paradise forever, I’m returned to a sea shore, to my family who is waiting for me. The book offers some hope, some consolation, after our journey through the many hells that we have been through.”