Anthem of evaporated tears

Translated from Spanish by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

A concentrated and intense serial poem, Anthem of Evaporated Tears (El deber del pan) exemplifies the poetics of the elemental that characterizes Xavier Valcárcel's work, this time focusing on the generative qualities of fire's most destructive potentialities. Inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, the collection turns to face the violence at the heart of domesticity and gender, which is reconfigured by the poetic voice and his mother. Their mutual disillusionment with men frees neither of their responsibilities, as they attempt to flee a home in flames by going on vacation to another Caribbean island. Far from their daily labors, they are forced to turn back and look at the ashes of the home they left in their wake, in order to make sense of the totalizing potential they have nurtured together. Bread, oversignified by literature and history, is a product of both care and gendered labor and, like the violence that forges it, becomes invisible through repetition. Valcárcel breaks down the base materials for its creation, adding his own grief, his mother’s, and the final ingredient: fire. This bilingual edition, translated by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, breathes new life into a contemporary Puerto Rican classic.