Reality Checkmate (Stahlecker Selections) - Softcover

Ruiz (Po, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1961897385 ISBN 13: 9781961897380

Verlag: Four Way Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A dynamic and philosophical debut collection, Daniel Ruiz's Reality Checkmate choreographs the endless wrestling match between lyrical sensibility and ontological principles taking place on the mind's stage. These poems exquisitely demonstrate that phenomena in the material world are rarely as simple as they seem and yet must continually confront the universe's countermove--the constraints of life itself, the knowledge that all we truly have is the present moment and the face value of our perceptions. He succinctly summarizes the history of art as cultural capital--"all of us are / eternally punished with proving / literature is about literature // after all"--while revealing the redundancies and blind spots of intellectualism--"Meanwhile, a lost sheep / finds grass to eat // anywhere it wants, / and does not mind, / like Lorca, letting its hair // grow long." While Reality Checkmate delights in the cerebral mode, its celebration of relativity as well as the lush materiality of language yields equal imagery and musicality, upholding sensory experience and human relationships as existentially significant in the absence of absolute truths. In Ruiz's astonishing first book, dawn is not morning--or rather, not merely morning. "Madrugada" rejects a navel-gazing discourse on sentimentality and the passage of days, commanding that "you for whom meaning / is the meaning of beauty, be gone." We could spend our whole lives ideating a metaphysics of time and waste the wonder of sunlight right in front of us. "Meanwhile, / the clouds are proud of all of us. It's 12:01. / A man dragged by a poodle says / Good morning. Everyone in the orchestra / stands up at once."

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daniel Ruiz is a Puerto Rican and Cuban poet and translator, a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and Florida State University, and
a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series. In 2016, he was a Fulbright Scholar to Chile. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English & Literary Arts at the University of Denver, where he edits poetry and translations for the Denver Quarterly.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

"Agenda"

All that’s left is to be happy.
We’ve tried letting closing doors
crunch our fingers, reaching
for a bite of white bread; seen
every episode of this season’s
war on a cheap television set;
sat at bus stops mid-flood,
hoping. We have fought back
but forgotten, or tried to forget
the tide of bones the sand sits on
as high tide eats the shore.
You’ve got to stare at a mountain
for centuries to notice it move
an inch. If the moon crumbled,
we’d be the pinball that broke the glass.
But, now, the only thing is to be happy.
We have tried everything else.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Four Way Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1961897385
• ISBN 13: 9781961897380
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 104
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar