Hard Equilibrium

Mateo Morrison has published many books of poetry, essays, and prose. His first collection of poems, Aniversario del dolor (Anniversary of Pain), published in 1973, is the starting point of his post-war poetic production, of the social message that identifies with the people who inherited the pain of more than 30 years of dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Critics have classified Morrison as a social and political poet as politics have been an essential part of the poet's life, with his poetry often being testimonial in style. But Mateo Morrison is not only a social poet. This collection, Hard Equilibrium, is an important compilation, as it brings together the most interesting works of Morrison's oeuvre. Full of social and urban lyricism, Morrison's verses are the driving force behind modern and liberating poetry, like that of his precursors Jacques Viau Renaud, Rene del Risco Bermúdez, Miguel Alfonsea and Juan José Ayuso, among others. Morrison comments in an interview: "I perceive that poetry permeates everything and can be found in a painting, in a song, in a look, or in nature" and this perception is fully brought to life in Hard Equilibrium.