On this day, I will learn that the human head weighs about two and a half kilos."
-- Carolyn Forché

Importance: This quote, which comes at the end of the first unnumbered and unlabeled section of the book, reveals in a subtle yet dramatic fashion that Forché has held a severed human head in her hands. The quote is emblematic of the tact and delicacy with which Forché writes about atrocities and human rights abuses.

I tried several times to write a poem like it, but failed, and decided that I hadn't lived long enough or interestingly enough, but this didn't entirely account for the failure. When I wrote about the places I had been and the things I'd done, there was no thread of purpose or commitment, as there was in the life of Hikmet. Maybe Leonel was right to say that my poems were about myself, even if they were also about...
-- Carolyn Forché