[Bruce McBirney]

Julia Alvarez is probably best known for her novels How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies, Yo! (my favorite of her novels), and In the Name of Salome (a fine novel about a poet). But she was a poet before she was a novelist, and The Other Side/El Otro Lado is a memorable and moving poetry collection.

Many of the poems here are about being stretched between and enriched by two languages, two cultures, and family in two countries. But the poems span a variety of topics—the childhood loss of a beloved housekeeper who sang while working, but left suddenly one day with no goodbye (“The Gladys Poems”); the lovely but painful arc of a middle-aged romance that didn’t last (“The Joe Poems,” highlighted by the “The Last Love Story,” recounting the narrator's hopeful acceptance of her lover's struggle to let go of a prior lost relationship--as lovely a poem about love as I can recall); and the return as an adult to a childhood homeland that was left behind suddenly many years before (the long title sequence “The Other Side/El Otro Lado”).

Here is a link to a page with more information on this book (and Julia Alvarez’s other poetry books): http://www.juliaalvarez.com/poetry I think there are also links on that page to Amazon’s sales page for each book.