The Weight of Sound: Poems by Mariano Zaro

Coming in October 2025

“With an eye for detail and with textured language, Mariano Zaro’s
The Weight of Sound asks the ineffable questions: how do we all suffer?—how do we survive the suffering? This collection’s poems bristle with gorgeous syntax which allows the reader to feel, as the speaker in ‘After the Diagnosis’ says, ‘as though beauty could cure anything.’ You, dear reader, will want to know.”
—Lynne Thompson, Los Angeles Poet Laureate Emerita

“Mariano Zaro’s seventh book of poetry, The Weight of Sound, is
steeped in the drama of impermanence, the inevitable loss of all sentient beings—from the fragile butterfly to our own failing bodies. ‘I end where my body ends,’ Zaro writes in one poem, where a child pricks a finger, holding it outstretched, ‘like a candle or a lighthouse.’ As a child, the speaker tried to stave off the inevitable with pen and paper—’Each body labeled, organized, immutable.’ In these poems, the poet strives
to hold on to what is departing, to what has already departed: ‘I call
you by your name and all the names. / I call you by no name at all.’”
—Blas Falconer, author of Rara Avis

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Publisher: Walton Well Press
Date Available: October 20, 2025

Length: 92 pages

ISBN 978-1-964295-12-1
Format: 6 by 9 inches, paperback
Price: $17.99

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About the Author

MARIANO ZARO is the author of six previous books of poetry, most recently Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press, Los Angeles, CA) and Padre Tierra (Olifante, Zaragoza, Spain). His work has been featured in the anthologies Monster Verse (Penguin Random House), Poetry Goes to the Movies (Beyond Baroque Books), The Coiled Serpent (Tía Chucha Press, CA) and in several magazines in Spain, Mexico and the United States. His translations include Buda en llamas by Tony Barnstone and Cómo escribir una cancion de amor by Sholeh Wolpé. He is a professor of Spanish at Río Hondo Community College (Whittier, California). www.marianozaro.com