Arrebato [madrid]
I used to live in Madrid, but now I only go when I’m able, and feel like it. When I get there I perform certain rituals, like a pilgrim arriving at Santiago de Compostela. One is to have a beer at a great bar called Pepe Botella, and another is to give in to the temptation of Arrebato (“Rapture”), a bookstore on La Palma street, right in the middle of Malasaña. It’s a second-hand bookstore, but that second hand has a soft touch. Pepe, the bookseller, finds objects of value to the literary sybarite and offers them up for sale instead of keeping them for himself, which is what I would do. It’s not like Tipos Infames, a nearby bookstore with a Michelin star for selling new work. It’s a space for exploration, a place where you never know what you’re going to find. Pepe knows everything about Spanish and Spanish American poetry, and laughs a little when he sees me with the Stephen King novels I scoop up from this fount to feed my collection spilling from my arms. I tell him I’m a bit of a freak, and he indulges me. Then we get to talking about poets, about our friend Ajo Micropoetisa, and about the situation in Spain. Arrebato is my School of Continuing Education.
I did penance there, once.
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Arrebato Libros – La Palma 21 – Madrid
[ + bar ]
An American Poet’s Dream: an interview with David Shook
Interview and introduction by Pola Oloixarac translated by Heather Cleary
A young professor of literature in Los Angeles collects funding and poems online in order to make... Read More »
Evita Fashionista
Mariano López Seoane translated by Heather Cleary
A decade ago, the New York philosopher Jennifer Lopez gave us “Jenny from the Block,” an ode to upward mobility... Read More »
DARK (an overture)
Edgardo Cozarinsky translated by Cayley Taylor
It starts, always, in the temples, an almost imperceptible throbbing at first, and in the precise moment he acknowledges it, that pulsing starts... Read More »
Mar del Plata
Rosario Bléfari translated by Hilary Levinson
We’re standing in the plaza, watching the man who makes ashtrays in just a minute or two. The scent of freshly burned wood.... Read More »