Balacera 
Armando Alanís Pulido

Balacera is a Spanish poetry collection by Armando Alanís Pulido with phrases that at times make you feel like the victim and suddenly like the culprit. What’s it like to be a coward, a kidnapped, a zeta? Who robbed the northern towns of Mexico from its peace and when are they returning it to its people? Meanwhile, Armando Alanís narrates violence in short poems using words that are delivered with the force of bullets and linger like scattered gunpowder with profound significance.
 
Using his unique minimalistic style, Pulido is able to display images and events that any contemporary keen reader can relate to, in a synthesis charged with irony and sad truth. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a bulletproof vest, he’ll get you with a scathing coup de grâce directly into the heart. Poetic gunshots are delivered as each chapter is named after words of anguish that are too familiar: Bala perdida, Casquillos percutidos, Balaceando poetas, Unas líneas..., Somos la evidencia, A quemaropa, all living in our Chulas Fronteras.
 
Pop culture has brutally swallowed a distended pill that cures no malady. Alanís helps us wash it down with a hint of sarcasm and a lot of irony. But his poetry is not watered down. Each phrase is carefully crafted in shades of red as a powerful blast of linguistic finesse.

Armando Alanís Pulido (Monterrey, 1969) is the founder and coordinator of the project Acción Poética. He has received many literary awards including the Diego Montemayor Civic Merit Medal and was declared a distinguished citizen by the City of Monterrey.

You can purchase Balacera through PlanetadeLibros press. Click here to purchase.
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Reviewed by
Mónica Rodriguez-Raygada
6/5/2016​

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