cleghorn-villareal

<div class="at-above-post-homepage addthis_tool" data-url="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/radiant-regeneration-vanessa-angelica-villarreals-beast-meridian/"></div>My first encounter with Vanessa Angélica Villarreal&#8217;s stunning new book from Noemi Press, Beast Meridian, was framed by the natural and geopolitical disasters of late summer 2017. As Hurricane Harvey devastated coastal Texas, Villarreal&#8217;s book seared me with its portraits of Houston in storm season, the ocean &#8220;slicktongued and thick with oil and ants.&#8221; Only days after Trump crowed over the end of DACA and then feebly tweeted, &#8220;No Action&#8221; (attempting to reassure those who feared deportation during the program’s six-month phase out), nine Dreamers were detained for hours at Falfurrias Checkpoint. That very day I read and reread Villarreal&#8217;s wildly inventive prose poem &#8220;dedicated to the immigrants buried in mass graves in and near Falfurrias, Texas,&#8221; in which the poet walks the sacred ground where &#8220;agitation pulls even at hanging planets&#8221;: “I swallow a bee for each ill deed done. I am a hive walking. I strain to hear you over the regret.” <a href="https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/reviews/radiant-regeneration-vanessa-angelica-villarreals-beast-meridian/#more-5546" class="more-link">Read more</a>
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Radiant Regeneration: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal&#8217;s Beast Meridian

Radiant Regeneration: Vanessa Angélica Villarreal&#8217;s Beast Meridian

Cassandra Cleghorn is a poet (Four Weathercocks, 2016) whose poems and essays have appeared in journals including Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, The Common, Poetry International  and New Orleans Review. She teaches at Williams College, is the poetry editor of Tupelo Press and lives in Vermont. <a href="http://www.cassandracleghorn.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.cassandracleghorn.com</a>