Here is poetry of courage and passion, which manages to be tender and achingly sensual and what is often called ‘political’ at the same time. This is a major new voice. – Margaret Atwood

The Country Between Us opens with a series of poems about El Salvador, where Carolyn Forche worked as a journalist and was closely involved with the political struggle in that tortured country in the late 1970’s. Forche’s other poems also tend to be personal, immediate, and moving. Perhaps the final effect of her poetry is the image of a sensitive, brave, and engaged young woman who has made her life a journey. She has already traveled to many places, as these poems indicate, but beyond that is the sense of someone who is, in Ignazio Silone’s words, coming from far and going far.