"This isn't for life" by Juan Gabriel Miño is now available for pre-order :)
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There’s a survivor
of the absolute solitude that lives and lingers
within solitude, tracing lines that form
meanings.
That’s how it melts away:
the fear of recognizing yourself
as a stranger in some window.
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"This isn't for life" is a translated, bilingual edition of Argentine poet Juan Gabriel Miño's 2024 debut book of poems, "No toda la vida vamos a estar juntos," published by Mansalva Editions. Translated by Andrew Judson Stoughton and Anayvelyse Allen-Mossman, "This isn't for life" takes the flaneur, the vernacular poet, the confessional poet, and "bashes [their] head against the grate." This is a book where people watch their mothers get in car accidents on live TV. Mexican singers almost meet their deaths at the hands of their adoring fans. Workers scream at children about the absolute, existential necessity of having a beer.
The surface isn't what it seems.
Social realism gives way to surreality and returns. Metaphor fails when it is needed most. Confession turns into an obliteration of the self. The lyric "I" gives way to its real subject: the relations that constitute the self composing and decomposing with each new line.
Gay life, night life, work life, life in the capital, life in the capital as understood via life once spent in the provinces—in keeping with the flaneur-tradition that the book upends, "This isn't for life" is a portrait of a city as much as it is of a speaker. This is Buenos Aires and its greater suburbs in the 21st Century.
Buy this book, dummy.
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Juan Gabriel Miño was born on August 21st, 1989, in Gregorio de Laferrere. He is a writer, poet, and playwright. He received a prize in the Bienal de Arte Joven, and was selected for the Escuela de Escritores of CCRR Rojas and for the Cinema Program at
Torcuato Di Tella University. He is featured in the anthologies “Raros peinados nuevos” (Eterna Cadencia, 2017) and “Antología de obras en construcción” (Libros de Rojas, 2012). He published the chapbooks “Una historia de fantasmas” (Un solo corazón, 2022) y “Billetera mata galán” (Banco malo, 2021). As a dramatist, he produced “De vez en cuando me derrumbo,” “La poesía no me paga el alguiler,” “Mi bicicleta vale más que yo,” and “Ningune pibe nace cheto,” among others. On the part of these works, he has participated in a wide array of national and international festivals. He has written for the newspaper Clarín, for the “Intimate Worlds” section; he currently writes for the supplement SOY in the newspaper Página 12. He founded and runs the independent press Ediciones Luismi.
