Have You Been Long Enough at Table is a debut collection that reminds us that for whom we write can be as essential as why. These are poems that can feel like eavesdropping, specific and intimate, curbed of excess exposition. Sometimes, I believe myself to be the audience and sometimes a witness to someone else’s exchange. Which leads to the question, who else is listening and when? In a collection that navigates Cuban American history, political instability, climate change, and their interlinked potential for displacement, where and when does language bring us?
Throughout the collection, Sainz weaves a series of sonnets that address the orisha, but each invocation speaks widely toward the experience of exile and diaspora, with a speaker firmly aware of her own palimpsest: “I’ve left my outline in…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, January/February 2024