After Ruben

*Starred Booklist Review* After Rubn unfolds as a decades-long journey in poems and prose, braiding the personal, the political & the historical, interspersing along the way English-language versions & riffs of a Spanish-language master: Rubn Daro. Whether its biting portraits of public figures, or nuanced sketches of his father, Francisco Aragn has assembled his most expansive collection to date, evoking his native San Francisco, but also imagining ancestral spaces in Nicaragua. Readers will encounter pieces that splice lines from literary forebearers, a moving elegy to a sibling, a surprising epistle from the grave. In short: a book that is both trajectory & mosaic, complicating the conversation surrounding poetry in the Americasabove all as it relates to Latinx and queer poetics.