Antes Que Isla Es VolcánAntes Que Isla Es Volcán

"In sharp, crystalline verses, written in both Spanish and English versions, Antes Que Isla es Volcán daringly imagines a decolonial Puerto Rico. Salas Rivera unfurls series after series of poems that build in intensity: one that casts Puerto Rico as the island of Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest, another that imagines a multiverse of possibilities for Puerto Rico's fate, a third in which the poet demands his right to a future and its immediate distribution. The verses are rigorous and sophisticated, engaging with literary and political theory, yet are also hard-hitting, charismatic, and quotable ("won't you be sorry? / won't you wish you had a boss? / won't you get restless / with all that freedom?")."--