The Sun Will Rise, But So Will the Seas: A Review of Ariel Francisco’s All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins by Nicole Yurcaba


In his fourth collection All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins, the speaker in Ariel Francisco’s poems mourns Miami ruined by climate change, development, and capitalism’s gross excesses. Meanwhile, as a coping mechanism for their grief as well as an adaptation to their ever-changing surroundings, the speaker meditates on a future city whose ruins are reclaimed by the sea. With the scientific insights of Stephanie Niu’s Survived By and the graceful, defiant speculation of Jared Beloff’s Who Will Cradle Your Head?, Francisco’s poems offer readers witness, humor, and a necessary voice for these unpredictable times. 

Part of the collection’s lyrical and linguistic magic forms when the Spanish appears beside the original English, thanks to translator Francisco Henriquez. The dual-language structure of the book gives the book a beautiful duality, especially when readers reach the section of the book comprised of one- and three-line poems. The Spanish translations also vary compared to the English translations, which attests to the nuances and liberties translators frequently take when working with a medium like poetry. One of the best examples of this is “your favorite polluters,” a poem which consists of eight brief lines in both languages. However, the Spanish version utilizes no stanza breaks, while in the English version, the middle lines appear as their own stanza and boldly declare “you can’t even use them / to make a raft when the waters come.”

Readers also experience a transference of blame as the speaker observes that, regarding the change from plastic to paper straws, “the sea turtles / don’t even say / thank you.”

Other poems appear as brief, three-lined, untitled commentary that pack a socio-political punch. One such gem reads:

  politicians are just poets
  blaming everything
  on the moon.


Again, the transference of blame is paramount in the poem. In these brief lines, nonetheless, Francisco adeptly captures the political irrational blame-games and the chaos that ensues in certain political spheres regarding climate change. These lines, too, drip with a caustic denial inherent in anti-climate change rhetoric, and this sense of denial forms from the imaginative, dream-like imagery of “blaming everything” on a distant entity.

“After Reading That Scientists Want to Use AI to Decipher Whale Language” quietly challenges not only the influence of humanity on the natural world, but also how humanity imposes technology on it. The poem opens with a sincere question:

  What good will it do
  to transcribe the lyrics
  of their music,
  their mournful Earth elegies?


This poem then segues into a quiet critique of capitalism as the speaker reflects on how exactly the whale’s language will be monetized and manipulated for human benefit:

  Upload it to Spotify
  and deliver them their
  residuals of penny fractions.
  Anything can be monetized,
  even the wails of whales.


However, from this point, the poem shifts into an observation of the systematic oppression intrinsically formed by capitalism as well as nurturing a false sense of empathy. The speaker notes that “So many human voices / go unheard, unmuted” and are “buried in rubble, / drowned and drowning.” The speaker also implies that AI forms “artificial empathy” and that if the whales could advocate for themselves by forming “a climate change podcast,” they would “pull the plug.” Implicitly, the speaker comments on academia and STEM’s reliance on a capitalist system for funding—a system that frequently overshadows and oppresses BIPOC scientists and academics. In this then, the collection resonates with nonfiction works such as Jasmin Graham’s Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist.

The collection’s closing poem “Small Image of the World” offers a lyrical snippet of hope to what otherwise might be perceived as a collection rife with dystopian vibes and a sense of hopelessness. In “Small Image of the World,” readers observe a “pair of turtles / basking on a tossed out tire.” The turtles’ defiance of their surroundings—a creek “that’s more sludge than water”—is what gives readers hope. The speaker believes that the turtles “still believe in the sun” which appears as a “shining / heart in the sky still beating.” This poem’s quiet fortitude is inspiring, but it is also a stark reminder about the fragile lives at stake as climate change drastically reshapes the planet. 

Ariel Francisco’s poetry once again tackles head-on the difficult socio-political and economic issues so few poets dare to challenge. His poems echo the calls to action found in prose works like Briefly Very Beautiful and Trashlands, but, more so, they exemplify how poetry can become a tool for advocacy. These poems adroitly and artfully seize a generation’s anxieties and hopelessness about climate change while turning to nature for healing, hope, and restoration.