The Future Is a Country I Do Not Live in

<p class=ql-align-justify>In her enchanting collection of poems Cynthia Buiza traces the shape of memories / the noise they make with a delicate uncompromising touch. Her calm melodious lines push open the doors we tell ourselves we cannot open doors to rooms that hold what we believe we cannot face - mother lover loss. Distilled from years of longing and griefwork of solitary walks and communal rituals Buiza's wisdom is sweet wine for bitter times.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-Boris Dralyuk poet translator and Editor-in-Chief of <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Cynthia Buiza's poetry continues to witness unceasingly inviting us to join her in what I call as the last vigil to a passing world where despite the odds and doubts she continues to recollect the tracks and thoughts of our fugitive fragile lives now enshrined in a foreign tongue she has recoiled and reconciled as her own domicile a second skin.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-Kristian Sendon Cordero poet and translator</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>What does poetry look like from the notebooks of a life thoughtfully walked? These pages reflect the maturity of consequence filled by a migrant advocate world citizen and a spirit who has held poetry long enough to understand its torrents. Poetry for those who stroll outside its white walls is a miracle at dawn. And there are many miracles in this debut collection - language as a dance between mercy and grace - so much thinking so much survival so much courage from a poet who paves her journey by documenting the everyday vanishings and appearances.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-Bino A. Realuyo author of <em>The Gods We Worship Live Next Door </em>and co-founder of The Asian American Writers Workshop</p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>Many worlds collide in the poetry of Cynthia Buiza but what remains with the reader are the worlds of the new country vis-a-vis the old homeland. Silt and silk stone and star a vast country and an archipelago with too many names for islands. People suffer and live in her poems; violence and hope commingle here. She maps this line of desolation from one continent to another... It is a poetry teeming with images moist and melancholy ghosts frozen in the dead eye of memory. The rough-grained world of the everyday and the slippery world of dreams are present surfacing in her dreams/ trailed by a lullaby of crickets nesting... in secret places. This is an assured debut for a poet whose wise and wonderful voice deserves to be heard loud and clear.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-Danton Remoto author of <em>Riverrun A Novel</em> Winner of the National Achievement Award for Poetry Writers' Union of the Philippines</p><p><br></p>