Book description
In this poetry collection, Margaret Randall uses the metaphor of
ruins to meditate on time's movement--through memory, through cities,
through the leavings of history, and through the bodies of people who
have experienced time's transformations and traumas. Randall's ruins
include not only Chaco Canyon, Hovenweep, Teotihuacan, Machu Picchu,
Kiet Siel, Petra, and sites in ancient Greece and Egypt, but also
Auschwitz-Birkenau and lives shattered by torture and oppression.
"Always there is that moment of arrival, as another reality
rises before me, superimposed upon the one I live today. Sometimes the
membrane is torn, and I find myself moving in and out. Boundaries
dissolve. A mysterious space, between then and now, warns as it
invites: promising revelation and maybe also fresh trauma if I am
willing to risk its secrets."--Margaret Randall, in the Introduction
Writer and social activist Margaret Randall is the author of more
than eighty published books, including
To Change the World: My Years
in Cuba
(2009) and, most recently,
As If the Empty Chair / Como si la silla vaca
(a bilingual book of poetry) and
First Laugh
(essays). She lives in Albuquerque.
