Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 01/01/2020 *Starred Review* Engle’s novel in verse tells the life story of Rubén Darío, the famed Niño Poeta (Boy Poet) of Nicaragua. Beginning with his sad and lonely childhood, Engle tells of Darío’s status as an orphan—abandoned by his mother, with no father to speak of. Motivated by anger and emptiness, he poured himself into writing, and the book tells his intriguing rags-to-riches story, written from a believable child perspective. Engle explores Darío’s relationship with words and the effects of abandonment, trauma, grief, and loss on his work. The cyclical nature of events described, as well as the seasons’ change and the rollercoaster of emotions—all based firmly in research—reflect how the poet’s past affected his identity and career. Engle also pays close attention to Darío’s mestizo identity and the importance of utilizing Spanish language, and there is a wonderful section on linework and rhyming patterns and structures, an educational element for young poets trying their hands at redondillas, octavillas, espinelas, and seguidillas. Along his life’s journey, Darío encountered violence, alcoholism, terrible family secrets, devastating natural disasters, and racism—but, as Engle writes, he was a “hunter of daydreams,” only content to share his explosive “verse hurricanes.” Darío would go on to found the movement of Modernismo, and Engle details more historical information in the back matter. Exceptional. - Copyright 2020 Booklist.