Poetry
ISBN 978-1-957746-19-7
p.72
 
To learn to describe the animal is a neat meditation on fatherhood, on the politics of place, and on the capacities of poetry to rage against violences of the state and within the home, and the machismo narratives that sustain such abuses. Birds, riot police, and professional wrestlers abound, as well as an (almost) boundless enthusiam for whatever poetry, or one's relationship to poetry over time, makes possible: a sincere disposition to softness and sadness. 
 
PRAISE FOR To learn to describe the animal
 
"Simultaneously tender-hearted and unsparing, Guillermo Rebollo Gil's English language debut is a subversively powerful collection of poems about fatherhood, brotherhood, violence in many forms, the tense and fraying bonds that connect families and nations; Puerto Rico, 'an island where, experts say, most cannot live at all;' and so much else that is 'badly beautiful.' Pro wrestling, the ostensible subject of many of the best poems here, turns out to be packed with rib-cracking metaphors for emotional vulnerability:  'The biggest difference between pro wrestling and real life—in wrestling, only bad guys get to be cowards.' This voice is so charming and so disarming that readers will find themselves flat on the mat before they realize the match has started.  Rebollo Gil is one of the good guys, the opposite of a coward." Craig Morgan Teicher, Author of Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey
 
"Guillermo Rebollo Gil is a poet and a lawyer and, consequently, he understands that, like history and memory, the truth is a story we tell and retell to make sense of who we are to each other. The poems of To learn to describe the animal dwell in doubt and remorse, in the glare of self-interrogation, and in the tireless work of loving.  With disarming honesty and grace, this book will startle you into clarity and make you want to be kinder and more true." Jennifer Chang, Author of An Authentic Life
 
"Not since Edgar Kunz’s Tap Out or Patrick Rosal’s Brooklyn Antediluvian have I read a poetic portrait this complete and this sensitive in its rendering of masculinity, performance, fallibility, and heritage.  To learn to describe the animal is as elegantly made as it is movingly candid." Brian Blanchfield, Author of Proxies: Essays Near Knowing
 
Guillermo Rebollo Gil (San Juan, 1979) writes poetry, creative nonfiction and cultural and literary criticism. His poems have appeared in BOMB, Fence, Poetry Northwest, The Hopkins Review, and other journals. In 2020, the Spanish publisher Ediciones Liliputienses published a selection of his Spanish-language poetry under the title Informe de Logros: poemas 2000-2019. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Florida, a law degree from the University of Puerto Rico, and an MFA from Bennington College. Es el papá de Lucas Imar y Elián Iré.