The Common Grief: Selected Poems by Roberto Sosa
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\ Library JournalThis bilingual edition introduces English-speaking readers to a Honduran poet who seems very much a man without a country: "It's a landscape, not a land." Anxious to locate himself, he personifies-and hence personalizes-cities, buildings, and rivers. Poem after poem is dedicated to a friend. Written over four decades in which strife and change continually threatened his small country, these gently innocent poems wend their way toward death, stopping here and there to capture the games that lovers play in the face of death. Sosa is a true romantic born into a highly political time, his language frequently awkward, and his imagery symbolic, clichd, or vague. Optimistically refusing to engage in diatribes against war and murder, he does his best to praise with a pointing finger. Unfortunately, the writing often falls short of its target. Recommended for larger poetry collections.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly Poetry Editor, "Soho Weekly News," New York\ \
