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Friday, September 6th, 2013
 
posted evening of September 6th, 2013: Respond
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Tuesday, September third, 2013
 Reading some notes from a while back I happened on the name of Lina Meruane, a Chilean author, and a recent book of hers. Sangre en el Ojo is a memoir (fictionalized, I don't know to what extent — what I've been able to find online suggests that Dr. Meruane, who teaches at NYU, does have juvenile diabetes; but this is presented as a work of fiction, so I'm taking the Lina Meruane who is the book's main character as a distinct person from the Lina Meruane who wrote it) of losing her vision from hemorrhage caused by diabetes. The story is set in New York and Santiago de Chile, we meet Lina (a graduate student, if I've understood correctly) in 2001 just as she begins to lose her vision; the first chapters have some mesmerizing descriptions of looking at the bleeding in her eyes.
posted evening of September third, 2013: 1 response
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Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
My reaction to J. Sáez de Ibarra's "Las Meninas" on the first few readings was one of excitement and confusion. The first section -- "Bocetos/Sketches", which makes up the body of the story -- is gripping and interesting, but has no resolution; the second section, "Las Meninas" is just a page. It appears to be the character Juan Felipe describing the positions of all the members of the household in the photo which was soon to be taken at the end of the first section, and which is reproduced very unclearly on the facing page; under which appears a subtitle listing the figures represented, but by different names. Confusing. The key, as it took me a long time to figure out, is the "photo" -- it is a print of Diego Velázquez' painting "Las Meninas" (1656), a portrait of king Juan Felipe IV's household. The painting is the centerpiece of the story -- "Bocetos" is serving to set up the characters who appear in the painting -- which is for the purposes of the story not a 1656 painting but a photograph of a contemporary celebrity's household. Accepting all this requires some pretty twisted suspension of disbelief -- eg it is kind of difficult to accept the dwarfs Nicolás Pertusso and hydrocephalic Maria Bárbola as Juan Felipe's adolescent son and the prostitute with whom he spent the night -- and adds a new dimension to the story, completes it.
posted evening of August 27th, 2013: Respond
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Monday, August 26th, 2013
posted evening of August 26th, 2013: 1 response
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Sunday, August 18th, 2013
Occasionally in the past I've blogged about books that I come to with no idea at all in advance, what to expect. Sáez de Ibarra's Mirar al agua is one such. I first came upon the  author's name and the title a few weeks ago when Marta Aponte recommended it. This is always a fun way to read, completely free of expectations.
The first couple of stories I've so far just skimmed the first lines of, not found much of anything to draw me in. "Las Meninas" (left) I find fascinating, a story told entirely in dialog, extremely fast-pased. I find it renders very nicely in English. "Una ventana en Via Spermazella" and the next few stories seem very interesting but have not been quite able to crack the code that will get me into the stories. Especially intriguing among these is "La PoesÃa del Objeto."
"La superstición de Narciso" is just spellbinding. More experimental than anything else thus far. "Escribir Mientras Palestina" (which I'm midway into now) is a nicely engaging piece of first-person narrative about a visit to Palestine.
posted morning of August 18th, 2013: Respond
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Saturday, August 17th, 2013
Wow, there is some great poetry in this issue of Metamorphoses. Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Hilst, Orhan Veli, Benny Andersen (whose "Kierkegaard on a bicycle" is going to be my new favorite poem for at least a little while),...
posted afternoon of August 17th, 2013: Respond
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Another Zupcic story, another Osner translation: "Tescuco, Italy" is printed in the Fall 2013 issue of Metamorphoses, the journal of the five colleges faculty seminar on literary translation.
posted morning of August 17th, 2013: Respond
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Tuesday, August 13th, 2013
A house at Mount Irazú
by Eduardo Valverde
tr. Jeremy Osner
These little stars, stars setting in the rivers and the streams,
working their way loose from our fingers and our wallets, stars flowing out like water;
and there will be no one to pay the check
nor to tally the coins.
His ashtray has a leak in it,
it's a little cardboard cup with water in it from a bottle.
You can picture the scorching agony of the fire -a little scream-
that split its fibers.
Green is the green, and leaden all the gray.
The girls are playing, they're laughing, out on the deck;
the women are waiting - just a few more minutes-
for them to come back in without a scratch, as big as life.
We were not sleeping.
I know it because I could hear them out the window
fumbling, impatient
those shapes in the dark. Maybe that's how cows dream,
but us, no.
Us, we weren't sleeping.
So many times, I could swear
he just snubbed us;
indifferent to the whisky
and to the electric skillet,
to the mint tea and the conversation.
Cold reigned
like the silence that volcanoes impose.
And the stairs,
stairs shy and ominous in the night,
downstairs to the morning -- sleeping still,
she's ready to arise.
Don't freak,
in this house
no-one yet has died.
posted evening of August 13th, 2013: 1 response
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Saturday, August 10th, 2013
Looking through Mirar al agua to see what will catch my interest... I'm startled and intrigued by this story, which starts out fast-paced dialog and keeps being that with no narration for 12 pages!
posted morning of August 10th, 2013: Respond
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Monday, August 5th, 2013
One more Bogotano poem -- this is the final image in the book, from Aurelio Arturo's poem "Dream City" (previously untranslated -- in her note, Anne McLean thanks Lillian Nećakov for help translating it. I wonder if Anne or Lillian wrote this post at WordReference?*) Searching for the full text of the poem brought me to the pdf of GuÃa Literaria de Bogotá, which seems like a useful resource to have at hand; the website is Museo Fuera de Lugar which itself looks pretty interesting.
Ciudad de sueño 
Yo os contaré que un dÃa vi arder entre la noche
una loca ciudad soberbia y populosa,
yo, sin mover los párpados, la miré desplomarse,
caer, cual bajo un casco un pétalo de rosa.
Muros que yo formé con mi sangre hecha esfuerzo,
puertas al sol doradas que elevé a mis espaldas,
ciudad de mil mujeres de ojos dorados, brazos
lentos y bocas rojas que en su silencio cantan.
Asà como en la sombra desciende una cabeza
al fondo de una idea, rápida como piedra,
aquella ciudad loca, oh rúas de mi júbilo,
se hundÃa en silencios duros y en soledades negras.
ArdÃa como un muslo entre selvas de incendio,
y caÃan las cúpulas y caÃan los muros
sobre las voces queridas tal como sobre espejos
amplios...¡diez mil chillidos de resplandores puros!
Y eran como mis mismos cabellos esas llamas,
rojas panteras sueltas en la joven ciudad,
y ardÃan desplomándose los muros de mi sueño...
¡Tal como se desploma gritando una ciudad!
 * Or hm, no, it appears that message was posted by the translator of Falling into Turkish! Düşen Şeylerin Gürültüsü is in Everest Yayınları's Dünya Edebiyatı Dizisi series and is translated by Süleyman Doğru.
posted evening of August 5th, 2013: Respond
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