As we move on from Canada, we're still staying in North America with our next poet: Mexico City-born Mónica de la Torre, who's resided in New York City for more than two decades, recently pursuing a doctorate at NYU and serving as a senior editor at the venerable art journal, BOMB. We'll be reading Talk Shows, her debut volume from 2007.
de la Torre's work is imbued with a transitional and transformative nature: her poetic language exists between Spanish and English, and she freely borrows from the cultural chatter of both traditions, from a wide array of poets to the newspaper and television shows. One side effect of this orientation is a dialogic tone to much of her work, and a novel experimental spirit (similar to what we've seen with Wah and Brossard) guides her compositional practice. As will be the case with some of our other collections, you'll want to be sure to keep an eye on the notes in the back of the book, which should be a useful aid to your reading.
Here's our reading schedule for Talk Shows:
- Thurs. September 18: "The Script" to "To And No Fro" (3–30)
- Tues. September 23: "Talk Shows" to "Demolition Derby" (33–63)
And here are some supplemental links on de la Torre:
- de la Torre's PennSound author page: where, in addition to a number of Segue Series readings at the Bowery Poetry Club, you'll also find a wonderful Close Listening reading and conversation with Charles Bernstein from 2009.
- de la Torre interview and reading on The Progressive's website
- Joyelle McSweeney's review of Talk Shows in Latino Poetry Review
- Craig Santos Perez's review of Talk Shows in The Acentos Review
- Doug Korb's review of Talk Shows in Barrelhouse
de la Torre reads as part of the "Lunch Poems" series at UC Berkeley, 2007:
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