Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018
In Written after a Massacre, Daniel Borzutzky rages against the military industrial complex that profits from violence, against the unfair policing of certain kinds of bodies, against xenophobia passing for immigration policy. He grieves for the children in cages and the martyrs of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburg. But pulsing amid Borzutzky’s outrage over our era’s tragedies is a longing for something better: for generosity to triumph over stinginess and for peace to transform injustice.
Daniel Borzutzky is the author of several poetry collections, including The Book of Interfering Bodies; In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy; The Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the 2016 National Book Award; and Lake Michigan, a finalist for the 2019 Griffin International Poetry Prize. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto’s Valdivia received the National Translation Award. He has also translated books by Chilean poets Raúl Zurita and Jaime Luis Huenún. He teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
