<div><div><b>The American debut of Basque writer Kirmen Uribe's "simple, devastating poems" (Bob Holman)</b></div><div><br><i>Whenever we're saddened everything looks dark,<br>When we're heartened, again, the world crumbles.<br>Every one of us keeps forever someone else's hidden side,<br>If it's a secret, if a mistake, if a gesture.</i><br>                                                             --from "May"</div><div> </div><div>Kirmen Uribe has become one of the best-known Basque-language writers--an important contemporary voice from a vital but largely unknown language. <i>Meanwhile Take My Hand</i> presents Uribe's poetry to American readers in both the original and in the poet Elizabeth Macklin's skillful and award-winning translations.</div><div><br>In these poems are the drug addicts of Spanish fishing towns, the paved-over rivers of urbanized medieval cities, the remains of loving relationships, whether entirely uprooted or making do with a companionable silence. The Basque phrase <i>Bitartean heldu eskutik</i>, which became the book's title--<i>Meanwhile Take My</i> Hand--Uribe has said is "what you say when there's nothing at all you can say."</div></div>