Not Go Away Is My Name

Alberto Ríos

Resistance and persistence collide in Alberto Rios’s sixteenth book, Not Go Away Is My Name, a book about past and present, changing and unchanging, letting go and holding on. The borderline between Mexico and the U.S. looms large, and Ríos sheds light on and challenges our sensory experiences of everyday objects. At the same time, family memories and stories of the Sonoron desert weave throughout as Ríos travels in duality: between places, between times, and between lives. In searching for and treasuring what ought to be remembered, Ríos creates an ode to family life, love and community, and realizes “All I can do is not go away. / Not go away is my name.”

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ISBN: 9781556595875

Format: Paperback

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I Do Not Go Away

You have terror and I have tears.

In this cruel way, we are for each other.

 

We are at war. You always win.

But I do not go away.

 

You shoot me again. Again, I do not go away.

You shoot with bullets, but you have nothing else.

 

I fight back. I shoot you

With fragments of childhood, where you played the hero.

 

I shoot you with memories of your mother

And your little sister, Maritza.

 

I shoot you with spring in the rolling mountains

And the taste of plantain bananas and sugar.

 

You do not fall down dead―

You can kill me, where all I can do

 

Is hold up the mirror of remembering to you―

The mirror of everything you have done.

 

You set fire to me with gasoline.

I set fire to you with the memory of your first love.

 

You cut my hands off. I cut your hands off

With the way you saw them disappear

 

When he was diving into the warm water of the lake,

The summer of swimming with your brother.

 

Do you remember the names of the left-for-dead?

The damaged, the hounded, the hurt?

 

Do you remember my name?

 

Your fist is hard.

My name is crying.

 

You strike a match.

My name is cringe.

 

You lift your foot.

My name is pain.

 

You wake up.

My name is closed eyes.

 

Your smile mimics the size of the opening

On the side of a head, a crude opening

 

That a mean needle will stitch up tonight.

Your arm laughs at me with its muscle.

 

All this. All these tears you have made,

This water you have found in the desert,

 

All this blood you have drawn

From the bodies of so many who needed it.

 

You win. You have always won.

All I can do is not go away.

 

Not go away is my name.

About the Author

Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s inaugural poet laureate and a recent chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently, Not Go Away Is My Name, preceded by A Small Story about the Sky, The Dangerous Shirt, and The Theater of Night, which received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, he has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up …

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Reviews

“Alberto Ríos has always had a gift for restabilizing the personal universe in his poems, and his new book, Not Go Away Is My Name, is strong and deep as gravity… This is a border book, rural and urban at once, a pay-better-attention book, for all human beings who embrace one another, or think they relate to only a few. This is a major book for our time.” —Naomi Shihab Nye for The New York Times

“This striking 12th collection from Ríos draws its energy from the space between active resistance and sturdy persistence… A vibrant attention to color animates even simple descriptions… This work captures Ríos’s singular voice at its best.” —Publishers Weekly starred review 

“An engaging mix of moods and tempos, the formal limitations of these verses prompt
the longtime poet laureate of Arizona to flex newfound creative skills.”—Booklist

“…Touches on the timeless capacity of love, family and community to help us realize our better selves.” —ASU Now