Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry

by Mónica de la Torre (Editor), Michael Wiegers (Editor), Alastair Reid (Translator)

Overview

Not since 1959 when Octavio Paz and Samuel Beckett published An Anthology of Mexican Poetry, has there been a collection which so thoroughly examines the poetry of the country known for being "too far from God and too close to the United States." Yet, as Elliott Weinberger writes in his introduction,

"Americans know everything about God, but next to nothing about Mexico—few know that Mexico-particularly when compared to the United States-is a kind of paradise for poets."

Reversible Monuments introduces this "paradise" to American readers. It includes major international writers like Alberto Blanco, Pura Lopez Colome, and David Huerta, as well as exciting younger poets, and poets whose work, while well-known in the Spanish-speaking world has not yet seen publication in English. The twenty-five poets represented are as diverse as their American counterparts: They are urban, educated, younger, well travelled, aware of their literary heritage, and include Buddhists, feminists, Jewish poets, experimental poets, darkly brooding poets, and playfully entertaining poets.

Until the Poem Remains

by Francisco Hernandez

Strip away all the flesh
until the poem remains
with the sonorous darkness of bone.
And smooth the bone, polish it, sharpen it
until it becomes such a fine needle,
that it pierces the tongue without pain
though blood chokes the throat.

Reversible Monuments includes a healthy bilingual selection by each poet, features an introduction by Elliott Weinberger, and gathers the work of esteemed translators alongside that of younger translators. It also includes biographies of the poets, notes on the poetry, and an extensive bibliography of contemporary Mexican poetry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619321007
Publisher:	Copper Canyon Press
Publication date:	08/19/2013
Series:	A Kagean Book
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	520
File size:	1 MB
Language:	Spanish

Read an Excerpt

"Now that we're nothing, for example"

Now that we're nothing, for example,
we can be the rain. Certainly
the rain welcomes us with no hesitation, even
when it begins. And now it begins. Drops
on the windowpane: it welcomes us,
this item the rain. Kiss me.
Frailty, weave a thread around the bird's wee foot,
neighborly conclusion of the rain or finish, weave as much.
A kind of box with "Fragile" written
in agile hand, no trembling inside. Let us be fragile
now that we're not the ocean. A form welcomes us.

Eduardo Milán, translated by Roberto Tejada

from Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry

Table of Contents

	Preface	3
	Introduction	7
	Maria Baranda
	Epistle of the Shipwreck	17
	The weddings of flowers take place upon the stigma. Pollen unfastens when aurora begins, and in a moment life redeems itself and then withdraws	29
	With only two or three stamens, masculine flowers burst. They rise from their own depths, glistening and moist. Loosely turning over, they bring themselves up under the sky midway between light and shadow. Voiceless they wilt, sluggish they die	31
	Ecstasy	33
	Efrain Bartolome
	Tattoos in the Water	39
	Intermezzo with Five Crocodiles	45
	The Ill-fated Water	47
	Alberto Blanco
	Theory of Light	53
	Quantum Theory	55
	Set Theory	57
	Theory of Fractals	59
	The Accuracy of the Scale	59
	Metamorphosis of a Chair	69
	Three States and Three Kingdoms	73
	Maps	75
	Carmen Boullosa
	Elysian Garden	83
	Coral Bracho
	In This Warm Dark Mosque	109
	Fish of Fleeting Skin	113
	From This Light	119
	A Stone in the Water of Sanity	121
	Upon It They Gently Reflect	123
	The Hypothetical Spectator	123
	Stone in the Sand	127
	The Mysteries of Touch	127
	The Allure of Forms	129
	Buffalo Conde
	Flower of Gold	131
	Time for Trees to Dance	131
	Give Away the Lie	133
	Elsa Cross
	Monsoon	135
	Ivy	137
	Mandap	139
	Seva	143
	Fabulation	145
	Banyan	147
	Pavilion	147
	Words	149
	Form	151
	Epiphany	151
	Balancing Act	153
	Shakti	153
	Alfonso D'Aquino
	Hotel	159
	Amorous	161
	The Wedding	163
	Metempsychosis of the Dog	165
	"The sun opens its lips and says to us"	167
	The Opened Orange of Light	167
	Brief Viper	179
	Antonio Deltoro
	Cartography	191
	Eggs Laid by a Tiger	193
	Sunday	195
	Anesthesia	195
	Voyage	197
	Pillows	199
	Contemporaries	199
	Secondhand Book	201
	Neighbors	201
	The Shy Ones	203
	Gerardo Deniz
	Muse	207
	Meditate	209
	Ignorance	209
	The Authoritarian School and How a Respectable Literary Genre Was Born	211
	Auditor	213
	Christmas	215
	Childish	217
	Classified Ads	217
	Merlin	219
	Ark	219
	Map	221
	Act	221
	Oedipus to the Third Power	223
	Superior	227
	Jorge Fernandez Granados
	Minimal Ulysses	229
	The Perfumist	233
	Specters	237
	The Promised Land	241
	Account of the Marvels Whispered in a Mannequin's Ear	243
	Malva Flores
	Nomad House (excerpts)	251
	Turbid Diction (excerpts)	261
	Gloria Gervitz
	Migrations (excerpt)	263
	Francisco Hernandez
	On How Robert Schumann Was Defeated by Demons	281
	Claudia Hernandez de Valle-Arizpe
	Hemicranea (excerpts)	305
	David Huerta
	Thirteen Propositions against Trivial Love	317
	Machinery	323
	Prayer for August 21	325
	Pathological Beings	329
	Bolero at Armageddon	329
	Summer Mist	331
	The Cauldron	331
	Cancellation of a Construction Project	335
	Descent	335
	A Baroque Cell	337
	Light from Parallel Worlds	339
	Deck of Cards	341
	Pura Lopez Colome
	Dramatis Personae	343
	Heartache	345
	The Cubs	345
	Death of the Kiss	351
	Tedi Lopez Mills
	And Never Did...	365
	My Voice Faithful as a Shadow	369
	The Dead Weight of the Land	371
	An Ending by Pound	373
	On Reading Virgil	375
	Letter	381
	Advertisement	387
	Ernesto Lumbreras
	"The sky" (1)	391
	Overflowing Willow	393
	Reunion of Cellos	393
	Good-for-nothings on a White Corner	395
	Keys of the Saint	395
	A Green Hill, a Green Hill	397
	The Horizon Burns	397
	Regression of the Willow	397
	Where to?	401
	"The sky" (11)	403
	Eduardo Milan
	"I mean you as though referring to two furies because"	413
	"Rabbit-foot effectiveness, nonentity of"	413
	"Now that we're nothing, for example"	415
	"I believe in nothing, I collaborate, I assist"	415
	"Riddle me what marionettes are"	417
	"I let myself be led because I let loose"	417
	Five (excerpt)	419
	"We can't go on like this: be truthful, empty"	421
	"Do you care to remedy the faces of the gods?"	423
	"One's alone in this: making masks"	423
	"He sends word for them not to be in His place"	425
	"What chorus?"	425
	Fabio Morabito
	Sponge	429
	Scissors	433
	Piazza Gimma	439
	"I do not wish, in spite of all"	439
	"I've forgotten the words"	441
	"Elephants are born old"	443
	"Maps are drawn on Sundays"	445
	"I've never been in love enough"	449
	"Compared to the condos of the living"	451
	Josue Ramirez
	Tepozan	457
	Topography	463
	Mechanical Heart	463
	Of Fiction and Things	473
	Juan Gregorio Regino
	Cantares	479
	Jose Luis Rivas
	Red Tide	501
	Thalassa	503
	A Season of Paradise	507
	A Knack for Slipping Away	517
	River I	519
	Francisco Segovia
	Evening Star	527
	Premonition	531
	Chrysalis	531
	There Where You Sleep...	533
	Promise	535
	We Never Come	537
	It Isn't Gentleness	537
	Vegetal Animus	537
	Clarity of Silence	541
	Pedro Serrano
	Pool	543
	Bullfight	543
	Vertigo	545
	Rosary	545
	Inventory	547
	Ticklish Moments	549
	Boundary	549
	Flying	553
	Beacon	553
	Treadmill	555
	Victor Teran
	It Was Early Evening	559
	In the Palm of My Hand	561
	Indecision	561
	Six Variations on Love	563
	It's Over	565
	Natalia Toledo
	Na Tacha	569
	Zenaida	569
	Olga's House	571
	Temple	571
	Silly Ghost	573
	Na Aurea	573
	Marcelina	575
	Na Hermila Limon	575
	Cielo Min	577
	Revelation	577
	Agricola	579
	Bertha Beninu	579
	Na Victorica Litru	581
	Healers	581
	Natalia	583
	The Shadow That Draws the Light	583
	Manuel Ulacia
	On the Beach	585
	Hampstead Heath	585
	Return to the City	587
	Conrail Wax Museum	587
	In the Steam Bath	589
	Aegean Sea	589
	Visit to Turk's Head Pub	593
	In the Ritz at Meknes	595
	Arabian Knight	597
	Tenochtitlan Blues	599
	Veronica Volkow
	Arcana IV: The Emperor	601
	Arcana VIII: Justice	603
	Arcana X: Fortune	605
	Arcana XII: The Hanged Man	605
	The Story of the Labyrinth	607
	Wands	609
	The Valley of Zapata	611
	Heriberto Yepez
	"Maniacs and Crazies"	615
	On Coahuila Street	621
	The Life of a Cucapa Woman	625
	On the "Unusual" Lifestyle of the Cucapa Indians as Recorded by R. W. Hardy, British Lieutenant, While Exploring the Gulf of California	627
	Juan Martinez, Juan Nobody, Juan All	629
	Spanish Versions of Indigenous-Language Poems	637
	About the Translators	659
	Index of English Titles	667
	Index of Spanish Titles	671
	Index of Indigenous Titles	675

Editorial Reviews

In Mexico, poets are so highly esteemed that they are considered their country's cultural ambassadors. Many write for daily newspapers, and most are consulted for opinions about politics and social issues. In the United States, on the contrary, poets usually earn their livings as teachers and, "quarantined with [their] writing students," spin their creative wheels by writing to and for academia rather than to society as a whole. Ironically, anthologies of contemporary American poetry--frequently on bestsellers lists in Mexico--go, like the words of prophets, ignored in their own country. If homegrown poetry ranks low on the list of American pastimes, translations of Mexican poetry could rank even lower. De la Torre, a translator and coordinator of literature and visual arts programming at the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York, and Wiegers, the managing editor at Copper Canyon, hope to change all that. This volume began as an exchange of poets between the United States and Mexico in 1998, sponsored by the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and the Academy of American Poets. Featuring over 30 contemporary poets (born after or just before 1950), this anthology is a fresh voice from the south of the border. The language and extended metaphors found in many of these poems are original enough to suggest one of Mexico's finest poets, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, or Spain's equally complex Baroque poet Luis de Góngora. Nevertheless, each poet's work is unique, and the syntax of the poetry is unmistakably modern. Many poets are award winners or recipients of Guggenheim fellowships. The bilingual layout is easy to follow; English translations match the original Spanish nearly stanza for stanza. An added feature is the section containing brief biographies of the translators. Recommended for poetry and Spanish-language collections in academic and public libraries.

Library Journal

American readers haven't seen a collection of contemporary Mexican poetry since Mark Strand edited New Poetry of Mexico in 1970, observes Eliot Weinberger, distinguished scholar and translator of Octavio Paz, in his grounding introduction to this unique and substantial bilingual anthology. Since then, an entire "post-Paz generation" of poets has emerged, including the 31 gifted men and women showcased here, most writing in Spanish but some in indigenous languages. Spacious and accommodating, this work presents a generous number of gracefully translated poems by each poet, a felicitous in-depth approach that makes this much more than a sampler, and a sound decision given the poets' propensity for long, dreamy poems. Sensuality is ever-present, as is an intimate connection with nature, both classically pure and, in Efraín Bartolomé's poems, under assault. Gods of diverse cultures put in surprising appearances, and many works are metaphysical, although more personal realms are illuminated by Gloria Gervitz and Pedro Serrano, and Josué Ramírez discerns the cosmic on Mexico City streets. This is without doubt a landmark volume, but let's hope that it doesn't stand alone for too long.
— Booklist

Donna Seaman

"Every now and then a word/ crosses the border... marrying another/ it is received hospitably,/ declining or serving as a shield:/ little by little words turn mestiza... The dark hued family of words/ produces a blond daughter." These lines from Antonio Deltoro's "Cartography" are among the offerings of Reversible Monuments: An Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry. Edited by poet and translator M"nica de la Torre (coauthor of Appendices, Illustrations, & Notes) and Copper Canyon Press managing editor Michael Wiegers, this huge bilingual volume introduces readers to both lyric and narrative Mexican poets of varying backgrounds including indigenous poets writing in Zapotec and Mazatec all born after 1950. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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