Winner of the 2019 Gatewood Prize, selected by Patricia Smith. ADELANTE examines the relationships between place and loss, juxtaposing the death of a father with the suffering and resilience of the natural world. These poems use this juxtaposition to explore how images conceal and repurpose each other: a cigar is snuffed inside a conch, butterflies dangle from bullets lodged in tree trunks, and fingertips transform into the coconut they carry. Central to this exploration, the poems in ADELANTE investigate the imagination, demonstrating how such recursive salvaging influences our interactions with the world around us. For example, "The Visible World" begins by considering how passengers on a turbulent airplane find comfort in different things—charm bracelets, a butterfly wing, prayer—which leads to the speaker re-imagining her father's death. These poems further explore place, loss, and imagination by investigating the conflicts between commercial pursuits and the natural world—what happens when the real alligator wanders onto the animatronic beach.
"Jessica Guzman’s blazingly beautiful poems illuminate and record nature’s resilience and suffering as well as our own. In this marvelous first collection, 'like algae on a river // everything gradual we notice // at once: the service dog’s bark, / the fire flower’s sliver burst & contrails / conspiring against dusk.' Spirits of all kinds take us by storm; we emerge both cleansed and ravished, hungering for more."—Angela Ball
"Adelante is unerringly fresh and restless, a treasure of deftly-honed narratives that manage to be both unleashed and enviably controlled. The poet galvanizes the often staid stories that surround and numb us--in these pages, an alternately tender and ferocious lyricism is just barely contained. That lyricism bolsters the meticulous crafting that can't help but culminate in a sparkling and utterly original collection." —Patricia Smith