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A look at: The Art of Exile

In The Art of Exile, the Bilingual Review Press has released one of its most powerful collections of poetry

In The Art of Exile, the Bilingual Review Press has released one of its most powerful collections of poetry. William Archila takes the reader on a poignant journey from war-ravaged El Salvador to the streets of Los Angeles, revealing the turmoil Central American emigrants face when they leave their homeland and seek refuge in a foreign country. The Art of Exile is Archila’s first book, and the poet’s grief is unapologetically set before the reader in clear, yet lyrical terms. The voice is also authentic. Archila was 12 when he and his family fled the violence of El Salvador in the 1980s.

From the publisher:

“In The Art of Exile, William Archila asks readers to engage with a subject seldom explored in American poetry: the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s and its impact on Central American immigrants who now claim this country as home. In language that is poignant and often harrowing, the poet takes us on a journey from Santa Ana, El Salvador, to Los Angeles, California. Archila bridges race, class, metaphor, and reality with astuteness, mingling humor and pain with a skill that denigrates neither.”

From the introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner:

“A poet of the heart and head, of the personal and public, at times William Archila’s poignant poems make me hear and feel an echo of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo.”

The Art of Exiletry by William Archila

Bilingual Review Press

(88 pages)

$11