Undocumentaries

'Rosa Alcalá, originally from Paterson, N.J. is a true daughter of W.C. Williams with a distinct, gutsy, and penetrating identity twining a public poeisis with her own luminous particulars. I know of no one else writing such poems that cut into and reenact the "plebeian" with such personal force, eloquence, and skill. "The syntax of worry rewrites cellular codes" she writes and then proceeds to investigate and expose the Industrial Age and its "genetic drifts". A worker is "fighting like a girl for gloves", a kind of child's cognitive dissonance documents improperly stored chemicals, "the deep sleep of field hands" stirs memory as does the more current and common "paycheck clean of union dues." Undocumentariesis Archive made Poetry. "Factory is both fact and act and/mere letters away from face/and story . . ." Alcalá's imagination and language disarmingly penetrate and extend these powerful devices and activating signals. The face we see is hers and our culture's own. I celebrate this book.' (Anne Waldman)

Author: Rosa Alcala
Publisher: Shearsman Books
Published: 02/01/2010
Pages: 86
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.27lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.21d
ISBN: 9781848610729

About the Author
Alcala, Rosa: - Rosa Alcala is the author of two chapbooks, Some Maritime Disasters This Century (Belladonna, 2003) and Undocumentary (Dos Press, 2008). Her work appears in the anthology The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press, 2007), and in journals such as Mandorla, CHAIN, Barrow Street, Tarpaulin Sky, and The Brooklyn Rail. Alcala has also translated poetry by Cecilia Vicuna, Lourdes Vazquez, and Lila Zemborain, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University, and a PhD in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Born and raised in Paterson, New Jersey, she currently resides in El Paso, Texas, where she teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso. UNDOCUMENTARIES (Shearsman Books, 2010) is Rosa Alcala's first full-length collection of poetry.

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