Can I read The Backlit Hour on EtoBox?

The Backlit Hour by José Antonio Rodríguez is a work of literary fiction available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Backlit Hour about?

Whether silently coveting the birthday gifts of a privileged classmate, trying to connect with a mothers ghost-like presence, or interrogating the dehumanizing impulse of an Arizona minuteman, the speaker of these poems often finds himself on the wrong side of the border that delineates a space of belonging, marginalized or estranged from his surroundings, observing the Other with a sense of both awe and bewilderment. As such, the poems invite the reader to consider the relationship between life observed and life lived, between detachment and experience, between at-homeness and exile. In the poem Backlit, for example, the speaker is transfixed by the darkening silhouette of a loved one standing before a window, this presence becoming an absence in the shape of a human body; he thinks to speak but doesnt, foreshadowing the final poem about an intimate friend coming to terms with his imminent mortality through the quiet contemplation of an possums skeleton. These poems, navigating a landscape marked by political, physical, and emotional trauma, ultimately point to the potential of the sensual self of touch to transcend the limits of language.

Who reads The Backlit Hour?

Author

José Antonio Rodríguez

Publisher

Nacogdoches, Tex.: Stephen F. Austin University Press ; [College Station, Tex.]: Distributed by Texas A & M University Press Consortium

Published

2013

Language

EN

ISBN

9781622880041

Category

work of literary fiction

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Poetry, Humanities

Rating

5 / 5 (3 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14