Never Made in American

In this first full-length publication of his work in English, Uruguayan poet, visual artist, musician and cultural critic Martín Barea Mattos aims his poetic collage technique at the materialist pop culture that has become the norm in the Americas. Ubiquitous cultural artifacts and spaces like flash drives and parking lots take the place of icons of old as he moves along the circuitous streets of the modern city and into nightmarish mega-superstores (with Baudelaire as his guide), covering this territory with an accomplished array of stylistic shifts, sometimes reminiscent of Frank O'Hara's musings on the everyday, sometimes with deeply symbolic imagery more resembling García Lorca. With echoes, as well, of Ginsberg, Kafka and Dante, Barea Mattos emerges here as one of the more daring and darkly funny voices in poetry today.

Called by Aliki Barnstone a "consummate poet-translator," Mark Statman has rendered the work, often spiced with local idioms, into a compelling, readable English, perfectly capturing Barea Mattos's singular style. With an Introduction by Jesse Lee Kercheval.