Not Go Away Is My Name

Resistance and persistence collide in Alberto Rios’s sixteenth book, Not Go Away Is My Name, a book about past and present, changing and unchanging, letting go and holding on. The borderline between Mexico and the U.S. looms large, and Ríos sheds light on and challenges our sensory experiences of everyday objects. At the same time, family memories and stories of the Sonoron desert weave throughout as Ríos travels in duality: between places, between times, and between lives. In searching for and treasuring what ought to be remembered, Ríos creates an ode to family life, love and community, and realizes “All I can do is not go away. / Not go away is my name.”

Poet laureate of Arizona and a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Alberto Ríos is the author of eleven books of poetry. He is a National Book Award finalist, as well as a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Walt Whitman Award. His book The Theater of Night received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Published in the New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares, and other journals, Ríos has also written three short story collections and a memoir, Capirotada, about growing up on the Mexican border. Ríos teaches at Arizona State University and is the host of a PBS program "Books & Co." He lives in Chandler, Arizona.