{"product_id":"for-want-of-water-isbn-9780807027851","title":"For Want of Water","description":"\u003cb\u003eSearing verses set on the Mexican border about war and addiction, love and sexual violence, grief and loss, from an American Book Award–winning author.  Selected by Gregory Pardlo as winner of the National Poetry Series.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States, while across the river, Ciudad Juárez suffers a history of femicides and a horrific drug war. Witnessing this, a Filipina’s life unravels as she tries to love an addict, the murders growing just a city—but the breadth of a country—away. This collection weaves the personal with recent history, the domestic with the tragic, asking how much “a body will hold,” reaching from the border to the poet’s own Philippines. These poems thirst in the desert, want for water, searching the brutal and tender territories between bodies, families, and nations.\u003ci\u003eForeword by Gregory Pardlo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eI\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf I Die in Juárez\u003cbr\u003e13 Ways of Knowing Her\u003cbr\u003eOur First Year\u003cbr\u003eMy Father’s Family Fasts the Slaughter to Feast the Arrival of His Bride\u003cbr\u003eThe Kiss\u003cbr\u003eLate September, When the Heat Releases\u003cbr\u003eMeditations on Living in the Desert\u003cbr\u003eAdmit Impediments. Love Is Not Love\u003cbr\u003eContinental Split\u003cbr\u003eAt a Party\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eII\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePanic\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGedankenexperiments\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA Loaf of Bread\u003cbr\u003eAfter Dinner\u003cbr\u003eThe Eyes Open to a Cry\u003cbr\u003eIn Their Dark Habits\u003cbr\u003eKastanyas\u003cbr\u003eHow to Care for a Man, Withdrawing\u003cbr\u003eIn Step\u003cbr\u003eBecause “Some Women Are\u003cbr\u003eDisplaced Women’s Blues\u003cbr\u003eYou Say You Can’t Sleep\u003cbr\u003eThai Massage\u003cbr\u003eBodies, and Other Natural Disasters\u003cbr\u003eFor Want of Water\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIII\u003cbr\u003eRose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAutopsy:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow we come to smoke:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHigh, high, high:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAutopsy, Juárez:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTale, two cities:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHigh and low:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCrack rock, a hard place:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAutopsy, us:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDrug war:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow we love to score \/ (buying glass pipes at the barrio store):\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIV\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSea Change\u003cbr\u003eAt the Symphony: 7 Things I Wish I’d Told You\u003cbr\u003e[ Rules for Behaving on an Airplane ] \u0026amp; \u003ci\u003eSimultaneous Monologue on Your Separate Grief\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLast Photograph of My Mother Laughing\u003cbr\u003eWhen in Solitude, the Surprise of Morning\u003cbr\u003eLeaving the University Gym\u003cbr\u003eTuesday Night in Montparnasse\u003cbr\u003eMoment in Storm\u003cbr\u003eMarking. Connecting: Between Going and Stopping,—\u003cbr\u003eOld Beds and Hollywood\u003cbr\u003eSchool Terrorist Exercise, 2005\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eV\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat Is Broken\u003cbr\u003eBefore Dawn\u003cbr\u003eWe’re Really Not Okay\u003cbr\u003eGolden Shovel: at the Lake’s Shore, I Sit with His Sister, Resting\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eGrave, ma non troppo tratto\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSafely Watching a Solar Eclipse with Kuya\u003cbr\u003eOrison\u003cbr\u003eWhile My Lover Rests\u003cbr\u003eTouched By Dusk, We Know Better Ourselves\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLines I’ve Stolen, and Other Notes\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eCredits and Acknowledgments\u003c\/i\u003e“In this urgent and lyrically astute new compilation, Philippines-born Pimentel, winner of the American Book Award for \u003ci\u003eInsides She Swallowed\u003c\/i\u003e, writes about the huge divide between El Paso, TX, and murder-slicked, drug war-ravaged Juarez directly across the Rio Grande. . . . Affecting and well wrought; Pimentel is a poet to watch.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Pimentel] excels at crafting a gorgeous language that drapes around the coarseness of the world.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sasha Pimentel threads the complex and intricate geographies of lives across borders: Wyoming, Montparnasse, Saudi Arabia, Ilocos, Manila, but primarily El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico, where there have been more than forty-eight thousand documented fatalities and more than five thousand disappeared in relation to the drug trade. . . . The crossings Pimentel speaks of are perilous, but I am glad to have her as a guide, because she has the capacity for finding the smallest lights in the incinerated cities, shining through glass or the throats of pipes.”\u003cbr\u003e—Luisa A. Igloria, author of \u003ci\u003eOde to the Heart Smaller Than a Pencil Eraser\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The poetry of Sasha Pimentel is visceral, haunting, searing. This is a poet who sees what most of us would rather not see. Her vision ranges from the thousands of women murdered in Juárez to the single boy dragging the body of his mother, dead of dehydration, across the border into New Mexico. In language of fierce compassion and tenderness, Pimentel humanizes the dehumanized. And oh, how we need such poems.”\u003cbr\u003e—Martín Espada, author of \u003ci\u003eVivas to Those Who Have Failed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Sasha Pimentel writes evocatively of our irksome obsession—the Mexican border as riddled, tempestuous demarcation between faith and melancholy, expectation and despondency, shadow and glow. El Paso and Ciudad Juárez cling to opposite sides of a hellish boundary—and the poet crafts an existence emboldened by that fracture, trumpeting the triumphs and hazards of a love that defies its ragged edict. No other poet has dared this landscape with such a deft and intrepid touch, conjuring an expansive, revelatory and indispensable read. Nothing—nothing—in these pages has been done before.”\u003cbr\u003e—Patricia Smith, author of \u003ci\u003eIncendiary Art\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eSasha Pimentel \u003c\/b\u003eis also the author of \u003ci\u003eInsides She Swallowed\u003c\/i\u003e, winner of the 2011 American Book Award. Born in Manila and raised in the United States and Saudi Arabia, she is a professor of poetry and creative nonfiction in the bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas at El Paso.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eGregory Pardlo\u003c\/b\u003e’s many awards include the Pulitzer Prize for his book \u003ci\u003eDigest\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301203333349,"sku":"NP9780807027851","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807027851.jpg?v=1767727551","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/for-want-of-water-isbn-9780807027851","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}