EDITOR’S NOTE
This collection features fifteen poets who live in the USA, including the territory (in effect colony) of Puerto Rico, and who write in Spanish, with an emphasis on the word and. If I had chosen to use but, I would have implied that all poets in the U.S. write in English. However, here is evidence that this notion is far from true. My intent is to showcase the richness of voices, languages, cultural backgrounds, etc., that are in fact an integral part of the United States literary landscape. These poems defy a monolithic idea of the USA, that all the poets writing in one country share the same experiences and ideas. They also challenge a patriarchal and colonialist view that it is possible to fully know/apprehend/grasp/possess a culture and society via English translation. For there is a mistaken idea that if you read these poems in English translation, you will know everything about the translated poet and their country of origin. In contrast, I am saying that total understanding, total apprehension, are impossible, and it is good that this is so. The poems appearing here make evident that any apparently singular society is actually plural and varied. Translation is of course key to entering this world; these poets together with their translators live bi/multiculturally, transferring, moving, pushing back givens, expectations, biases. This collection of poems and their translation is only a sample. It is not meant to be an exhaustive representation of all the writers who live in the USA and write in Spanish. It is not the first and it certainly will not be the last of these opportunities to display the diversity in poetry written in the USA. These fifteen poets hail from different countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, and Venezuela. By no means is this a homogenous group; even those poets that share a country of origin write differently and have different conceptions of art and life. That is, the collection does not render these poets in the position of cultural ambassadors. Reading one Argentine poet, for example, is not a representation of all poets from that country. Additionally, each poet writes about different subject matters and concerns. They have different styles too, and are in different stages of their careers: some poets are emerging, others are established.
I also want to call attention to the work of the translators, who, in this case, translate from cultures where Spanish is spoken. Some pairs of poet-translator already came as a team, while I paired up others, and there is one case of self-translation—again, variety. Like the poets, the translators also do their work and make their translation choices according to their poetics, poetic sensibilities, and reading(s) of the poetry they translate. It is important to understand that neither the translators nor this body of work is trying to erase difference and variety through translation. On the contrary, translation is a celebration of the intercultural differences. It points to the seams and makes them visible. To quote Sawako Nakayasu in Say Translation Is Art (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020): “Say [...] translation both pointing out the gulf and trying to bridge the distance […]”. Nakayasu underscores translation’s dual nature: on the one hand, it highlights the disparities between languages and cultures while simultaneously attempting to overcome them. This selection of poetry by poets who write in Spanish and live in the USA, along with translations into English, accentuates the different cultures in this country; it brings them to the surface and makes them conspicuous. It celebrates multiplicity, complexity, intercultural and transcultural living.
Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay. She is the author of six collections of poetry, including the chapbooks Between Gone and Leaving—Home (dancing girl press, 2023) and Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath (PRESS 254, 2022). Her poems (in English and Spanish) and translations (from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician), have appeared in many journals such as Asymptote, Zócalo Public Square, Figure 1, Eleven Eleven, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, SRPR, Arsenic Lobster, International Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Timber, and more. Cesarco Eglin is the translator of claus and the scorpion by the Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal (co•im•press, 2022), longlisted for both the 2023 PEN Award in Poetry in Translation and the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry. She is also the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press), which won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. Cesarco Eglin’s translation of The Mistaken Place of Things by Gabriela Aguirre is forthcoming from Eulalia Books. Cesarco Eglin is the publisher of Veliz Books and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown. lauracesarcoeglin.com