Between Good-Byes and Nostalgia [Entre Adioses Y Nostalgias] & Of Distances and Solitudes [De Distancias Y Soledades]

Marino Muñoz Lagos is the child of a sentimental and sad region of Chile, the south, which produced some of the greatest poets of all time. With all of the rain and long, dark winters, the poet withdraws into himself and becomes a friend of evocations and nostalgia. Marino once said that everything is measured by the yardstick of nostalgia and we inhabit nostalgia as if it were an old house. And so he engages readers with a sentimentality that combines his perspective on life--and death--while convincing them to open up their own lives. He speaks of old railway stations and the slow trains that carried away his best friends, a girl he loved and the voices of his childhood. He converses with wine during the long silences that death brings and imagines a communion with classmates who have long since departed. In line with many Latin American writers, he displays his solidarity with the poor, beggars, moneyless musicians, organ grinders and street people. He evokes the smell of bread on his mother's hands and keeps her tenderness alive even after her death. He speaks of the poets who come loaded with nostalgia and poverty in their pockets. And yet through all of the sadness he shines light on a promising future.

Bilingual - Spanish with English translation

Poetry.