“…possessed of brilliance and what Lorca called DUENDE!”  - Virgil Suarez

“I am overjoyed that William Archila has arrived on the poetry scene. His voice is not only an important addition to the chorus of Latino/a poetry, but a necessary one in the vast landscape of Belle Letres of the United States. To say he sings like an angel is an understatement.  He is possessed of brilliance and what Lorca called DUENDE!  THE ART OF EXILE joins the rank of the best poetry published this year.  Read it and help spread the word, please, for it is exciting to be present at the start of such a brave and luminous career.” –Virgil Suarez, Author of 90 MILES:  SELECTED & NEW

“The Art of Exile is what William Archila works to perfect in this first books of poems about El Savador, a country “small as a paper cut.” Archila breathes life into the boys and men left behind who have died in the dirt roads and stubble fields of his lost homeland as he builds the language of a new life in the north, a language steeped in jazz and blood, tobacco and chalk, concrete and dust. In unrelenting detail, he tells the stories of lives discarded, buried, and forgotten. History, poverty, family and faith move these poems into mysterious territories where the living speak to the dead and the dead speak back.”  –Dorianne Laux, Pulitzer Prize & National Book Critics Circle Award finalist 

“In The Art of Exile, William Archila’s amazing first volume of poetry, we have the memoir in poetry of a man who has made both a physical, global journey and a journey of the questing spirit.   Born in El Salvador, a country torn by civil war, Archila arrives, after long travail, in a new homeland of a deeply considered peace—it is the country of poetry.   We read depictions of men physically broken, psychically wounded by war, and testimonies of a populace governed by fear intermingled with the profound dramas of these same Salvadorans who’ve become immigrants in the communities of LA.  Archila’s poetry derives from this expanse of experience and makes of them short briefs on the poignancy of his exile’s acculturation in an urban world that is at once harsh and beguiling.  From the worst of humanity’s destructiveness, Archila creates the best our civilization has to give—humane sentiment, forgiveness, love, and poetry.  The Art of Exile is a marvelous contribution to the Art of Peace.”  —Garrett Hongo, Pulitzer Prize finalist 

“The Art of Exile summons us to a place where one must reckon with theimperatives of the human soul, where William Archila is the reigning master of some breathtaking imagery that encompasses a practiced, lyrical certainty. There's a deep singing at the center of Archila's world, a calling to everything that says home is where the heart is.” --Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize winner