Book Review Los ríos de la ira by Tarek William Saab

Abstract

In December 1986, Gustavo Pereira closed his prologue to the poetry collection *Los ríos de la ira* (The Rivers of Wrath) with an open question: “Why do we possess the certainties of the initiated?” Thirty-nine years later, the 2025 reissue by Vadell Hermanos / Monte Ávila / La Espada Rota answers wordlessly on the page immediately preceding the old prologue. Against a black background and in serene typography, the single expression *El iniciado* (The Initiate) appears. This editorial gesture, minimal yet resounding, transforms Pereira’s text into an archaeological document and allows us to measure, with surgical precision, the distance and the unsettling closeness between the young poet of twenty-four who wrote: “My soul has become a handkerchief of stone” (p. 29). These words arise from his experience in prison. This review takes that solitary page as a starting point to analyze the reissue of Los ríos de la ira as a paradigmatic example of the complex, and often conflictive, relationship between committed poetry, personal memory and political trajectory in contemporary Venezuela.