The Smoke of Distant Fires

"Complex and multidimensional, The Smoke of Distant Fires encompasses a wholeness for vision, one that's expansive, even symphonic."—From the Introduction by Daniel Shapiro

The Smoke of Distant Fires contains thirteen new poems from the contemporary Peruvian poet, essayist, critic, translator, and children's book author, Eduardo Chirinos. Precisely organized and formally inventive, each poem in the collection is itself a collection of ten numbered stanzas, and each of the stanzas themselves are fully formed poems, a series of rhythmic, elliptical fables from a fully recognizable, yet wholly original, world.

The third collection of Chirinos's poetry to appear in English, The Smoke of Distant Fires signals an exciting new direction in Chirinos's poetics—its multivocal stanzas, evocative intertextuality, and enigmatic transparency join forces to perform a poignant interrogation of what it means to write poetry in the early twenty-first century.

Eduardo Chirinos is a member of Peru's 80's Generation and the author of several poetry collections, for which he has receive the Premio Casa de Améica and the Premio Generación del 27. He currently teaches at the University of Montana.

G. J. Racz is an associate professor at Long Island University-Brooklyn, and former president of the American Literary Translators Association.

Daniel Shapiro is a poet and translator. His translation of Tomás Harris's Cipango was published by Bucknell University Press. He is Director of Literature and Editor of Review at the Americas Society in New York.