I Was a Bell

by M. Soledad Caballero

*Winner of the 2021 International Association of Authoethnography and Narrative Inquiry Award for Outstanding Book* *GOLD MEDALIST in the 2022 International Latino Book Awards for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award - One Author - English*
In this collection, Caballero imagines how memory frames and reshapes the present, how memory illuminates and limits the stories of ourselves, and how, despite the passage of time, primal moments in the past are the ghosts and echoes of our present. These poems interweave an early childhood lived in another country and in another language with experiences of immigration and family histories in the United States. They create connections between a child’s naïve perspective of dictatorship and an adult perspective informed by bodily illness and political knowledge. Ultimately, Caballero traces a lineage of memory, exploring how present moments unearth the past that ripples through them. This collection does not reconcile the past and the present. Instead, these poems remind us that how we ask questions about ourselves, our histories, and our bodies is what creates our identities, our traumas, and our future hopes and possibilities.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 7, 2021

About the author

M. Soledad Caballero is an associate professor of English at Allegheny College.

Reviews

[Caitlin Theroux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. The opinions expressed in this review are mine alone and may not reflect the views of the author, publisher, or distributor.

Little collections of poetry make big impacts sometimes. This is one of those. I’m interested to see where Caballero’s career goes, and if I Was a Bell is any indication, I’d say we’re about to see a great rise.

At once touching and heartbreaking, this little volume is a fascinating introduction to what could be a new wave in South American poetry and literature. What Neruda was to his generation, is what poets like Caballero will be to the incoming literary renaissance. 3.5 stars!

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. I particularly appreciate how the poems in this book play with the scale of experience. Cancer is personal: it happens in one human body. Pinochet’s coup was political: it happened to a whole country. But both are experienced by individual people, and their experiences overlap with those of thousands of others. These poems get at both the immediacy and private truth of personal experience, and the ways that those experiences are widely and importantly shared.

[Cameron Barnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a tremendous collection of poems. Heartbreaking, poignant, powerful, beautiful.

[Paola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunningly rich, wonderfully woven.

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt very captivated by the beauty, sorrow, and memory in this collection of poetry. I look forward to reading it again.

[Libre Livre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just gorgeous. A must read.