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andreablythe's review
4.0
Note: This was an ARC book.
Di Donato explores the modern world, full of cell phones and politics and popular music (Ani Di Franco and Janis Joplin, for example), by calling on ancient saints and virgin madonnas and the figures of forgotten Romans and Moors. The Spanish is presented alongside the English translation, but it also includes phrases and translations from Arabic.
I struggled with the poems in the first half of the book. Though I enjoyed individual lines, the thoughts jumped from concept to concept so rapidly that I couldn't grasp the overall feeling or meaning of the poem. This confusion may have been, in part, due to the fact that it is a translation and that I'm missing some of the cultural clues.
I found plenty of poems to love in the second half of the book, though, were there was a bit more of narrative flow and the structure of the poems didn't feel so disjointed. These poems were enough for me to enjoy the overall experience and I'll come back to this book again to see if my understanding of the first half changes with time.
"no soy el cuervo de mi madre
mi mirada es oscura de bella terminación
y yo no soy el olor del buitre del zamuro del ruego de mi madre
/
I am not my mother's raven
my gaze ends beautiful and dark
I am no longer the vulture's fragrance or the idiot's or my mother's plea"
-- from "No Hablo de una Vida Japonesa, te Estoy Hablando de Mi Madre / I Don't Mean a Japanese Life, I Mean My Mother"
Di Donato explores the modern world, full of cell phones and politics and popular music (Ani Di Franco and Janis Joplin, for example), by calling on ancient saints and virgin madonnas and the figures of forgotten Romans and Moors. The Spanish is presented alongside the English translation, but it also includes phrases and translations from Arabic.
I struggled with the poems in the first half of the book. Though I enjoyed individual lines, the thoughts jumped from concept to concept so rapidly that I couldn't grasp the overall feeling or meaning of the poem. This confusion may have been, in part, due to the fact that it is a translation and that I'm missing some of the cultural clues.
I found plenty of poems to love in the second half of the book, though, were there was a bit more of narrative flow and the structure of the poems didn't feel so disjointed. These poems were enough for me to enjoy the overall experience and I'll come back to this book again to see if my understanding of the first half changes with time.
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