ABOUT THIS BOOK

Standing against the visible landscape—the mountainous volcanoes, the jungles and savannahs—the seven trees conjured in these narrative poems by one of Latin America's masters also evoke another, more mysterious terrain. It is this other landscape, as invisible as poetry before it is written down but etched by history and animated by the collective memory of a people, that speaks through Pablo Antonio Cuadra’s Seven Trees against the Dying Light.

Storing experience as they exist, these tree-poems conserve local soil and memory in the place they inhabit. They are figures of life, stained by seawater and gun powder, by the bright red, bittersweet juice of the many life-giving plums that flourish in Nicaragua, and blood that has been spilled there. And they offer a way of remembering who we are, where we come from, and, above all, where we are bound if we cannot learn to root language in the earth that sustains us.

Printed here in Spanish with facing English translations, the edition includes an introduction with ecocritical focus, as well as complete notes on botanical, historical, mythological, and socio-political references.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912–2002) is Nicaragua’s most prominent vanguardista, an author who defined his poetics in the 1920s and 1930s. His work was first translated into English by Thomas Merton. Cuadra was nominated by his country for the Nobel Prize for literature twice and received numerous literary honors, including the prestigious Gabriela Mistral Prize from the Organization of American States. In Nicaragua, he is revered as perhaps his country’s greatest poet since Rubén Darío.

Steven White is a professor of modern languages and literature at St. Lawrence University.

Greg Simon is an associate editor with Trask House Books and the Salt River Review. Both White and Simon are poets themselves and have translated several books, including translations of Federico García Lorca and Rubén Darío.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents
Introduction	000
La Ceiba	000
The Ceiba Tree	000
El Jocote	000
The Jocote Tree	000
El Panama	000
The Panama Tree	000
El Cacao	000
The Cacao Tree	000
El Mango	000
The Mango Tree	000
El Jenisero	000
The Jenisero Tree	000
El Jicaro	000
The Jicaro Tree	000
Afterword	000
Translators' Note	000
Notes	000
Selected Bibliography	000

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