Category Spanish
Art and Politics: María Negroni’s “The Annunciation,” translated by Michelle Gil-Montero
In this deeply philosophical, semi-autobiographical novel, acclaimed Argentine poet Negroni explores a question that has figured in her writing for decades: the relationship between the aesthetic and the ethical, the poetic and the political.
Nostalgia as Oblivion in Nelson Simòn’s “Itinerary of Forgetting,” Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
By Cal Paule It’s funny, but I forgot where I left my copy of this book. It’s lost for now, but luckily I have a pdf version. If, though, it were the memory of the exact color of my mother’s hair, or the angles of a roofline above my hometown, I might not be as […]
On Gender, Pseudonyms, and Authorship: Eloy Tizón, “The Names” and Greta Alonso, “A Shield, a Shelter, a Place to Hide,” Translated by Dorothy Potter Snyder
The essays that follow were written by Spanish writers Eloy Tizón and Greta Alonso in response to a question put to them by El Cultural: “Women writers past and present: Is publishing under a pseudonym necessary anymore, or is it just another marketing tool?” I found great beauty and insight in their responses and so […]
Foreign Bodies: Margarita García Robayo’s “Holiday Heart,” translated from Spanish by Charlotte Coombe
The uncomfortable, ailing human body is foregrounded in this thematically dense novel, a fable about problematic motherhood and the hard labor of forging epistemological change in the 21st century.
Live on August 31, 2020: Special Issue on Elena Ferrante’s New Novel “The Lying Life of Adults,” Translated by Ann Goldstein
Elena Ferrante and the Question of Gender, Pseudonyms, and Authorship
Anna Karenina, Recomposed: Carmen Boullosa’s “The Book of Anna,” translated from Spanish by Samantha Schnee
The Book of Anna hinges on a paradoxical fantasy: rescuing Anna Karenina from Tolstoy.
On Sex and Death: Vicente Huidobro’s “Skyquake: Tremor of Heaven,” co-translated from Spanish by Ignacio Infante and Michael Leong
Composed as twin originals in Spanish and French between 1928 and 1931, this roving long prose poem witnesses the perpetual, agonized yearning of separated lovers seeking one another across eternity and infinity, where they collide—gloriously—on occasion, before scattering through the universe once again.
Foreign to Literature: Humor, Allusion, and Exophony in Aleksandra Lun’s “The Palimpsests,” Translated by Elizabeth Bryer
By Patrick Powers When I first read Elizabeth Bryer’s translation of Aleksandra Lun’s debut novel, The Palimpsests, back in January, I didn’t like it very much. I didn’t know what to say about it, so I didn’t write anything. After a few months, having left for and returned home from Russia after the onset of the global pandemic, […]
A Terrible Beauty is Born: Fernanda Melchor’s “Hurricane Season,” Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
By Emma B. B. Doyle The title of Fernanda Melchor’s Hurricane Season (La temporada de huracanes), translated by Sophie Hughes, takes its name from the many months in Mexico when you can look up at the sky and expect it to explode at any moment. This reliable forecast of disaster carries a similar tension to […]
Cardboard Conscious: Translation in Community
By Kelsi Vanada My favorite books of translated poetry to hold in my hands are no ordinary paperbacks: they are made of cardboard and screen-printed cardstock and hand-sewn signatures, crafted by independent publisher Cardboard House Press (CHP)’s Cartonera Collective in Phoenix, Arizona. I delight in handling them, rotating them to read the poems placed horizontally […]
Imaginings of Empty Spaces: “The Adventures of China Iron” by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Translated from Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre
By Robin Munby “I was definitely getting a taste for them, kisses from girls and gay gauchos” (132), says China, the eponymous narrator of The Adventures of China Iron, reflecting on the previous evening’s drunken orgy. Though set in the mid-19th century, you would be hard-pressed to find much common ground between the “erotics of […]
Masculinity’s Menace: Ángelo Néstore’s “Impure Acts,” Translated From Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
By Griffin Nosanchuk Ángelo Néstore has already accrued a vast array of accolades at the age of thirty three. He works as a poet, actor, and professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting at the University of Málaga in Spain. His collection of poems Actos Impuros won the 32nd Hyperion Poetry Prize. His poems […]
Lines of Flight: Guillermo Cotto-Thorner’s “Manhattan Tropics,” translated from Spanish by J. Bret Maney
By Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón Caribbean literary archives are very much like those metaphoric sea shores where the leftovers of shipwrecks of the past constantly wash up. A few years ago, in an important anthology of Puerto Rican narrative published in Venezuela, novelist Marta Aponte Alsina put it best when she wrote that the literary critic […]
Slipknots: Jorge Eduardo Eielson’s “Room in Rome,” translated from Spanish by David Shook
By Olivia Lott Room in Rome introduces English-language readers to the work of essential Peruvian poet Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Lima, 1924––Milan, 2006) through David Shook’s translation. A member of Peru’s “Generation of 1950,” Eielson is best known for his borderless aesthetic practice, which includes poetry, narrative, theater, visual arts, performances or “actions,” and syntheses that […]
Sentimental Education: Berta García Faet’s “The Eligible Age,” Translated from Spanish by Kelsi Vanada
By Lucina Schell Fidelity is often considered a virtue in translation, especially when the translator is female. So what happens when a young female poet writing in English decides to translate a feminist work of great rhetorical sophistication by a young female poet writing in Spanish that specifically plays with the idea of an aesthetic […]