Results by title

"In order to talk with the dead
you have to know how to wait:
they are fearful
like the first steps of a child.
But if we are patient
one day they will answer us
with a poplar leaf trapped in a broken mirror,
with a flame that suddenly revives in the fireplace,
with a dark return of birds
before the glance of a girl
who waits motionless on the threshold."

—from "In Order to Talk with the Dead"

Reared in the rainy forests of Chile's "La Frontera" region which had nurtured Pablo Neruda a generation earlier, Jorge Teillier has become one of Chile's leading contemporary poets, whose work is widely read in Latin America and Europe along with the poetry of his well-known contemporaries Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn. This English-Spanish bilingual anthology now introduces English-speaking readers to Teillier, with a representative selection of his best work from all phases of his career.

Carolyne Wright has translated poems from the volumes Muertes y maravillas (1971), Para un pueblo fantasma (1978), and Cartas para reinas de otras primaveras (1985). Avoiding the bravura effects of some of his contemporaries, Teillier writes from a life lived directly and simply, returning time and again in his poetry to the timeless and mythic South of his boyhood, the "Land of Nevermore."

In Trajectories, poet, translator, human rights advocate, and world traveler Carolyne Wright maps her poetic path in the crossing of cultural, linguistic, and national boundaries. From her origins in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest through Latin America (Chile, Brazil) and South Asia (India, Bangladesh) through languages spoken in these regions (Spanish, Portuguese, and Bengali), Wright recalls and relives the poetic trajectory as well as the seeming tangents that one poet’s relatively uncommon life has taken. She pays tribute to poetic mentors of the “Northwest School,” to Bengali and Chilean women poets, to the poetry and music of Brazil, and to poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, and Sylvia Plath.

Throughout her essays and interviews and across a wide range of literary interests, Wright explores connections between family and national history, intersections of personal and public spheres, and the poetics of the era in which she moves. She connects lyricism to social engagement, witnessing contemporary and historical issues while remaining committed to the heightened, musical language of lyric poetry. Both personal and political, a compelling story and a work of criticism, Trajectories seeks essential insights into poetry as a path of discovery across the cartography of the human heart. Wright offers these experiences and insights as a map for readers who wish to share the journey.