Not Go Away Is My Name

by Alberto Ríos

Overview

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.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781556595875
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	05/12/2020
Pages:	98
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.70(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Poet laureate of Arizona and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Alberto Ríos is the author of eleven books of poetry. He is a National Book Award finalist, as well as a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Walt Whitman Award. His book The Theater of Night received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, Ríos has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up on the Mexican border. Ríos teaches at Arizona State Universityand is the host of a PBS program "Books & Co." He lives in Chandler, Arizona.

Read an Excerpt

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 you were 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. LEGACIES The bearer of extra strings For those that break. Some footprints make noise and are loud— Walking where they like, Stepping over everything heel-first. They are the bagpipes of walking, The accordions, the Roman trumpets, The bugler’s rooster-call to reveille. But some footprints are quiet— Walking where they’re needed, Always welcome, the sound of rain In the desert of desperate need, Footprints so soft we rarely hear them, Leaving no scratching sound to the ear. But what is quiet is also strongest In that it does not walk away, Nor is its stance in front, or behind, But by one’s side, able to be counted on Even and especially through the wild Noises of the dark. In this we are given The lullaby, the étude, one’s simple hum, The double bass of it all, the contrabassoon, The long, sustained note rising from an oboe, The music underneath music, the work Underneath work: The great gift that—all along— Something magnificently quiet has been the song. THE CACTUS THAT IS MY CACTUS This afternoon, I sit next to a giant cactus—not against it, No matter how many small plaster statues and black velvet paintings Say so. On the velvet, that peasant man is not a picture of me, Not a painting of my brother, nor of anyone else I know. Who is that? Little man in a big hat with the drooping tips of a large mustache— He probably fell against the cactus, was stabbed by the thousand needles, Then died a gruesome death. Apparently, nobody was able to unstick him. So there he sits, a warning to all. The velvet painting is suddenly clear: A public service announcement for Don’t do this. Not that anyone does. I can’t in fact remember anyone at all sitting against a cactus In all the years I’ve lived in the desert. Not any kind of cactus. But if that man is not me, the cactus in the painting is my cactus. It is a wild and happy saguaro, arms everywhere, exuberant. My saguaro, that curious Liberace candelabrum, that supplicant, Arms raised for a century—it should be tired. But after so long it knows no other way, no other direction But up. It cannot stop, take a break, have some coffee and a doughnut, Put its hands in its pockets and walk off for a while In search of the ice-cream truck. More statue than tree, more arm than branch, It is set in the century of its ways. The hairs on its arms stand up, all the time. Afraid, angry, fierce, Thrilled—it’s hard to say. The saguaro will not speak, or if it does, It is very quiet. I myself don’t want to get so close. Perhaps what happens is that I miss what it whispers. But it understands. It takes no offense. Quite the opposite. With its arms it offers me, regardless, A bounty of toothpicks, of a sailmaker’s needles, A writer’s harvest of exclamation points. This giant on earth, done with walking, this one And the rest of its kind making their small town against time. Giver of gifts for those who will see them: You and I, cactus, we are clear on the quiet exchanges The desert makes with its creature citizens. In passing by, and every time, I never fail to wave, As every time I see you, you are invariably—invariably— Waving your arms in delight at seeing me.

Table of Contents

1 Gifts for those who will see them

Azúcar! 5

Salted Watermelon 6

Border Boy 7

Muxica 8

El Trabajo 9

I Do Not Go Away 10

The Morning News 12

Border Ratings 13

The Adjustments 14

Immigrant Centuries 15

The Cactus That Is My Cactus 16

Dawn Callers 18

2 The day has finished but has not gone easily

White among the Colors 21

The Secret in the Mirror 22

I Did It 23

The Circus Act Man 24

The Feeling of Feeling 25

Legacies 26

Don't Go into the Library 27

When the World Speaks Back to Us, Many Years Later 28

A Quiet Evening in August 29

3 Away from this small house on a quiet street

Five Years Later 33

The Scorpion of Loud 35

The Flour Mill Tour 36

This Afternoon Explaining about Changing Things 39 37

Amor Bruto y Azul 39

Even-Keeled and At-Eased 43

The Black Screen 44

December Morning in the Desert 45

Industralia 46

4 The forest of used-to-be

What Will Not Stay Still Long Enough to Be Named 49

Telling the Family Stories 50

CoffeeTea 51

The Cockfight Place 52

At the Recreo and Pitíc 54

Baseball on the Mexican Border 55

The Boys and Their Growing 57

The Young Man Frankie Thinks His Secret Thoughts 58

Breakfast That Will Be Mine 59

Beer That Had the Look of Champagne 60

Small Detective in a Quiet Kitchen 62

The Sonoran Season 63

Weak Day 64

Faithful Forest 65

5 Look back only for as long as you must

The Jazz of Us 69

The Nanas and the Tatas 70

Too Soon Asleep 73

Leaving without Saying Goodbye 74

Open Eye, Closed Eye, Open Eye 75

The Small Secret of Saint Cecilia 76

We Play Again, the Great Animal Night and I 78

Giants of the Night 79

The Quiet Boy Noé, Who Waited to Speak 81

Three Rivers 83

Drunk Monsoon 84

Seahorse in the Desert 85

The Barrel Cactuses of the Northern Sonoran Desert 86

A House Called Tomorrow 87

We Are of a Tribe 89

Notes 90

About the Author 92

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/01/2020

"We plant seeds in the ground/ and dreams in the sky" writes National Book Award finalist Ríos in his 12th collection (after A Small Story About the Sky), offering lines that encapsulate the broad reach of his lyrical scope, from the earthy and personal to the metaphysical and mystical. Rooting his poems in the desert landscape and the working people of the Southwest, Ríos internalizes the haunting myths and vivid sensations of the borderland ("It is not a place out there but a place in here") in order to conjure "The vocabulary of what is good here," the "momentary dictionary,/ the constant act of discovery" that defines the engaged human consciousness. The poet's long lines and short stanzas move at a thoughtful, considered pace, conveying not only the visual beauty of his surroundings ("the yellow/ Everything of the paloverdes, their fallen thousand happy yellow pieces of light,") but also the region's hidden, sometimes difficult histories ("Where they crossed does not exist on any map"). VERDICT Ríos's poems of memory and aspiration are small masterpieces of clarity and caring, "Hard at the work of being human." A richly hopeful collection that seems especially vital now. [See "Versifying," LJ 1/20.]—Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

Library Journal