"Here is poetry of courage and passion, which manages to be tender and
achingly sensual and what is often called 'political' at the same time.
This is a major new voice." -- Margaret Atwood
The Country Between Us opens with a series of poems about El Salvador,
where Carolyn Forché worked as a journalist and was closely involved
with the political struggle in that tortured country in the late 1970's.
Forché's other poems also tend to be personal, immediate, and moving.
Perhaps the final effect of her poetry is the image of a sensitive,
brave, and engaged young woman who has made her life a journey. She has
already traveled to many places, as these poems indicate, but beyond
that is the sense of someone who is, in Ignazio Silone's words, coming
from far and going far.