Speak The Mag
Poetry

Hôtel de la Providence

September 21

Hôtel de La Providence takes the pulse of childhood memories. There is a melancholic joy wrapping the poems, complicated by an energy of delight. For instance in “Alegría,” we are invited to crawl up “mud piles, down / steps, in sand, over pebbles, or stones, / soft and sharp” whereas “The Sailboat” steers us through waves of exile: we’re torn from the past, realistic about the present. This collection longs for a home, one the poet now inhabits only in her memory.