Immobility--PoetryPaperback, 17 January 2022

"To be an innovative poet on the Left Coast (or anywhere) is like shouting your truth to an empty (or at best half full) room. This is especially true if your innovations don't match the practice of the current reigning innovation. Iván Argüelles has never been a L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet, though language-tongue's parlance-is at the heart of what he does. Hearing him read his work aloud is a deep pleasure, but it is also here, on the page, in octogenarian splendor. As Pound, late in life, said of Eliot, after Eliot's death, after decades of output: Read him", Jack Foley. "Two poems per morning from the beloved Iván Argüelles cascade in reverse each overcoming transcendence. This sonic inversion choirs joy, choirs that are speaking-being behind us crablike. This morning: "Is there anything in the sky that looks like the world?" To paraphrase Zbigniew Herbert, the poet with one wing commands the stars to fall and there is light. This is that light coming and going", Solomon Rino.