Later the House Stood Empty

The poems of Later the House Stood Empty steam up from the banks of the Río de la Plata, exploring its history—personal, political, and geological—from the tip of a dinosaur tail found on the beach and the expeditions of Darwin to the lingering devastations of the 1970s military coups. Their speaker straddles two worlds: between Argentina and Uruguay, between Buenos Aires and the small town of Colonia, at once of this place and passing through, both foreigner and daughter of the river. In short lyrics pared down to what is left when love and hope have gone, Draper documents overlapping layers of time, stitched together by desire, beauty, longing, tragedy, and loss.