Category Spanish
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 […]
Silvina Ocampo’s Queer Eye: “Forgotten Journey,” translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan; and “The Promise,” translated by Levine and Jessica Powell
By Dorothy Potter Snyder Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido. — Chavela Vargas Queerness resists definition and finds expression in the manifold array of ways of being and seeing in […]
Clinical Erotics in Luis Panini’s “Destruction of the Lover,” Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel
This month, in memory of our contributor Professor Jed Deppman who founded the Oberlin College Translation Symposium, instituted a literary translation minor, and taught courses in literary translation and comparative literature, we are featuring three reviews by Oberlin College Comparative Literature graduates and students, taught and trained by Professor Deppman and other Oberlin College faculty. Professor […]
Light Detained by Bones: Miguel Ángel Bustos’s “Vision of the Children of Evil,” translated from Spanish by Lucina Schell
By Jessica Sequeira The two books gathered in this 2018 co•im•press translation as Vision of the Children of Evil, translated by Lucina Schell—“Fantastical Fragments” (1965) and “Vision of the Children of Evil” (1967)—were written in the decade before the military coup in Argentina, and it is understandably tempting to view them through a biographical lens. […]
“Free falling through the subconscious”: Pablo Neruda’s “venture of the infinite man,” translated from Spanish by Jessica Powell
Reviewed by Arielle Avraham Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) remains one of the best-known South American poets of the 20th century, with copies of his most famous books selling in the millions, and two biographies published about him. His life is the stuff of legend. Born in a rural town in Chile, he began writing poetry as […]
A Scrapbook of “Memorial Clippings”: “My Lai” by Carmen Berenguer, translated from Spanish by Liz Henry
Reviewed by Kelsi Vanada It feels as though the pages of Chilean poet Carmen Berenguer’s My Lai, translated into English by Liz Henry, originated in a scrapbook or journal kept over many years—picked up, loose pages shaken out, and gathered up again quickly and out of order. This sensation is augmented by the inclusion of […]
Figures from the Mountains: “Baroni: A Journey” by Sergio Chejfec, translated from Spanish by Margaret Carson
Reviewed by Peter Hegarty Baroni: A Journey (2017) concerns Venezuela, where Argentinian writer Sergio Chejfec lived from 1990 to 2005 and where he published Nueva Sociedad, a journal of politics, culture and the social sciences. Gathered in the book, published after he left Venezuela, are his memories of the country, the people and landscapes he […]
THE LIFE OF HIS OTHER: Ricardo Piglia’s THE DIARIES OF EMILIO RENZI. FORMATIVE YEARS, TRANSLATED BY ROBERT CROLL
Reviewed by Peter Hegarty Argentinian writer Ricardo Emilio Piglia Renzi (1940 – 2017) had two literary identities. Ricardo Piglia wrote operas, screenplays, stories and detective fiction. In the English-speaking world he is probably best-known for Money to Burn (1997), a non-fiction novel inspired, if that is the word, by the violent robbery of a security […]
Cruel Imaginations: The Stories of Mariana Enriquez and Silvina Ocampo
Reviewed by Rebecca DeWald At the Edinburgh International Book Festival last summer, I heard Mariana Enriquez read from her short story collection Things We Lost in the Fire, the first English translation of her work, by Megan McDowell. Twice, in fact: At the official reading, and at a more informal evening event with readings and […]
Transparent Hours: Eunice Odio’s Territory of Dawn. Selected Poems, Translated by Keith Ekiss, Sonia P. Ticas, and Mauricio Espinoza
Reviewed by Jessica Sequeira It seems a terrible irony: a poet who primarily dedicated her work to a Beloved, one whose verses seem written with joy and melancholy rather than malice, is born with a surname that means hate. But no, already it’s a mistake to start from signification. Let’s think into this a different […]
Sugar castles: I Remember Nightfall by Marosa di Giorgio, translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas
Reviewed by Jessica Sequeira The poems of Uruguayan writer Marosa di Giorgio (1932 – 2004) are luscious, dark and gorgeous — but they also leave the reader with a sickly taste, an effect similar to that following the rapid consumption of a bag of sticky sweets, gulped down one after another while in thrall to […]
Scattered Ashes: August by Romina Paula, translated by Jennifer Croft
Reviewed by Peter Hegarty In southern Argentina, where Paula sets most of the novel, August is bright and cold, and colder still in Esquel, the Andean mountain town to which the protagonist, Emilia, returns for the scattering of the ashes of her best friend, Andrea. The novel takes the form of an extended letter to […]