A Slightly Nasty Book / Un Libro Levemente Odioso: Poems / Poemas

"Profound yet playful, the poet Roque preferred to laugh at himself than take life too seriously, and so saved himself from grandiloquence, solemnity, and other ailments so gravely afflicting Latin American political poetry." --Eduardo Galeano, Roque

The most important posthumous collection of the "patron saint of the Latin American left" (Ben Ehrenreich, London Review of Books) is a fierce satire. Only the holy trinity of Lenin-Fidel Castro-Che Guevara escapes his sharp-edged mockery. These are nasty poems, but never unjustly so. He denounces the cruel hypocrisy of his enemies (the Salvadoran dictatorship, US imperialism, the international bourgeoisie) and his comrades, which ultimately lands him on the enemy side of civil violence. The mirror he holds up to revolutionaries and poets who fail to live up to their words turns to reveal an endearingly flawed and tragicomic figure. Only his cynicism is a pretense, armor for his idealism. The autobiographical poems in this collection mythologize the author's life, turning him into the unwilling martyr of a mystical revolution that continues to enlist those na ve enough to believe poetry can be political.