by Melina Draper (Author)
The poems of Later the House Stood Empty steam up from the banks of the R o de la Plata, exploring its history--personal, political, and geological--from the tip of a dinosaur tail found on the beach and the expeditions of Darwin to the lingering devastations of the 1970s military coups. Their speaker straddles two worlds: between Argentina and Uruguay, between Buenos Aires and the small town of Colonia, at once of this place and passing through, both foreigner and daughter of the river. In short lyrics pared down to what is left when love and hope have gone, Draper documents overlapping layers of time, stitched together by desire, beauty, longing, tragedy, and loss.
Author Biography
Melina Draper's poems have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Cimarron Review, Borderlands: Texas Review, PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art, Salamander, and other journals. Her book Place of Origin/Lugar de Origen (Oyster River Press, 2008), co-authored with her mother, Argentine writer Elena Lafert, won the Latino Book Award for Best Bilingual Book of Poetry in 2009. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and an MA in fiction from the University of New Hampshire. She lives in Geneva, New York.