Soap Is Political
Ruth Goring
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“Under a pressing sun / you live damp amid / damp trees, . . . but quícharo fish / lies on your plate like salted / angel’s wings.” Such earthy paradoxes in Ruth Goring’s new collection extend her loving lament to mountains and rivers, machetes, the odors in rough blankets. Soap is not just political: it is richly and variously sensual. It is hungry life swimming through your head or writhing through your gut—damned brave life. Goring’s passion for Colombia and its people, at times reminiscent of Lorca, engulfs the reader in unbearably beautiful images of pain and injustice:
My love in the dead groves, beyond
the murderous palms: I wanted you
without poison, I wanted you starry
with milk and pendulous leaves.
This book is itself “a dream tree / pungent of everything.”
—Helen Degen Cohen