The Murmuring Grief of the Americas

In the compelling and riveting collection, The Murmuring Grief of the Americas, poet Daniel Borzutzky exposes the harsh realities of current economic crises, social unrest, repressive immigration policies, and systematized bureaucracy, not just in the United States but throughout the Americas:

In order to mourn the bodies we love 

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Borzutzky challenges the use of the word America as an imperialistic construct that refers to the United States as representative of an entire continent, using the term unitedstatesian in place of American. With incisive irony, the poet draws our attention to the devastating effects of corporate greed and authoritarianism: “As we birthed hundreds of thousands of unitedstatesian babies // Whom we dressed in indestructible onesies.”

Most of the poems are in long form and extend all the way from left to right, occupying entire pages, their rhythmic cadence both soothing and unsettling—

The screams that are screamed in the silence that can only be   accessed when it is understood that what must be documented   what must be  narrated     what must be evaluated     what must be written  is  what can never be documented narrated evaluated or written

The first of the seven sections of the book is titled “WHEN WILL I BE HUMAN AGAIN?” Several subsequent sections speak to the book’s central theme: how to preserve our humanity in a capitalistic economy that places supreme value on economic gain, land ownership, and arbitrary notions of power.

Nationalism     democracy     dictatorship      the play within the 104-year-old play approaches these themes by forcing the audience members who are left-handed to stand in the corner and face the wall while the right-handed people study them from every possible angle of the universe     whispering you and your debt are the same you and your debt are the same