A 4-part poetry collection that explores women’s roles in familial dynamics, immigration, and El Salvador’s civil war while reflecting on the death of the poet’s father
A National Poetry Series winner, selected by the celebrated poet Reginald Dwayne Betts
When COVID-19 broke and the United States closed the border to travel, Alexandra Lytton Regalado was separated from family back in El Salvador. She wrote Relinquenda entirely during lockdown as a meditation on cancer, the passing of her father, and the renewed significance of community.
The central part of the collection focuses on her father during his 6-year struggle with cancer and considers how his stoicism, alcoholism, and hermitage might serve as mirror and warning. In contrast, she dedicates other poems to what it means for daughters, mothers, and wives to care for another as reflected in her relationships with the men in her life.
Situated in the tropical landscapes of Miami, Florida and El Salvador, the poems also negotiate the meaning of home, reflecting on immigration and the ties between United States and El Salvador 30 years after her birth country’s decade-long civil war.
In a lyrical and often bilingual voice, Regalado explores the impermanence and the body, communication and inarticulation, and the need to let go in order to heal regrets.
“A very moving and profound book by one of the most significant LGBTQ+ voices coming from Latin America.”
—The Morning Star
“Resilient, introspective, and reverent.”
—Harvard Review
“Relinquenda is a rarity in that, in one book, it contains multiplicity of longings and reckonings. Alexandra Regalado is poet as historian, and poet as that family member we all have who keeps the names in whatever holy book we name, the one who has the photo albums—and more than that, who we gather around when they begin to sing our stories.”
—Reginald Dwayne Betts
Relinquenda
I.
Mamá Tacuazín
Hija, an Inheritance
The Giantess
Videofeed from the American Embassy of El Salvador
I Prided Myself on Being Aguantadora
El Puente Que Nos Une
A Family History of Alcoholism
Cavities Are Inherited
Elegy with Wisdom Teeth
How to Crack an Egg
Hands Just Like Two Balloons
Hacer de Tripas Corazón
Caracol
II.
What My Father Taught Me About Black Holes
Probably the Most My Father Has Ever Said to Me
The Hero Myth
Drownproofing
Invasive
Vesper Bells
What My Father Taught Me About Evolution
Escape Room
Turning the Stone, Contrapuntal
Portrait of My Father X Days Before Dying
Concierto de Aranjuez
The Garden of Earthly Delights
Hesperides
III.
And Per Se And
Ánima, Silueta de Cohetes: The Night I Met Him
When We Were Long-Distance Lovers
Marginalia of La Vita Nuova
Tin Anniversary
Do You Know How Ugly You Are to Me Right Now?
Hiking Through a Slot Canyon
Marriage as Tributary: What’s Left in the Bend of May
Bufo Lovesong
Blank Card
IV.
Stalemate
Caravana Migrante
Pentimento
Hermitage
To My Reflection as I Wash Dishes
Vanitas
Five American Sentences
Verano, El Repunte
What My Father Taught Me About Time Travel
The Art Is Knowing When to Stop
Acknowledgments
Notes
Special Thanks
- “Hesperides,” SWWIM, excerpt
- “Concierto de Aranjuez,” Dialogist, excerpt
- “Leaving Room for Mystery and for Forgiveness to Let Go,” Beacon Broadside, Q&A
- “Give Me a Sign,” Poetry Off the Shelf/Poetry Foundation, podcast interview
- “Relinquenda,” Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), excerpt
- “Five American Sentences,” Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), excerpt
- “enjambments interview: Alexandra Lytton Regalado,” Academy of American Poets (Poets.org), Q&A
- “Newly Published Poetry, From Alice Fulton to Saeed Jones,” The New York Times, included in roundup
- “Alexandra Lytton Regalado: la escritora en la entrada a Relinquenda,” El Diario de Hoy, article
- “2022 Featured Fall Books List,” Academy of American Poets, included in roundup
- “Here Are the Latinx Poets to Read Now, ” Columbia News, included in roundup
- “Relinquenda, ” Poetry Foundation Harriet Reviews, review
- “¡Unidos and Inclusive for a Stronger Nation!: A Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month Reading List, ” Beacon Broadside, listed in reading roundup
- “Letters From Latin America,” The Morning Star, review
- “Exclusive: Alexandra Lytton Regalado on How Grief and Love Inspired her to Write Relinquenda,” People En Español Chica, interview
- “Episode 329: Alexandra Lytton Regalado,” The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, interview
- “Fall 2022 Poetry Preview,” Library Journal, included in Fall 2022 Poetry Preview list
- ““Videofeed from the American Embassy in El Salvador” by Alexandra Lytton Regalado,” Bomb Magazine, poem ran in summer issue
- “Poetry for the Rest of Us 2022,” Ms. Magazine, listed in Poetry for the Rest of Us roundup