Background Noise / Ruido de fondo: Poems by Saúl Yurkievich

"This bilingual collection of jazz-like poetry is a play of language and ideas, with language leading the way. These poems portray the world as a hodgepodge, a conglomeration of things, a nearly incomprehensible multiplicity. The poems take the form of a collage, full of similarities and contrasts that are left unresolved. Yet beneath the poetic play there is a troubling despair, a sense of disorder. Yurkievich both celebrates and laments the world's pandemonium, writing in the tradition of Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo. Like jazz solos, spontaneously flowing in response to themselves, they are great joys to hear aloud."