Poetry from other cultures fascinates me as much as American poetry does. Of all the languages in the world other than my own melting pot tongue, Spanish is my favorite. I've often read the poems of a fellow poet who writes in both English and Spanish, and told her how fortunate she is to be able to write in a passionate language like Spanish, a language that can speak gender with a final syllable, a language with passion inherent in the very act of enunciation. That said,discovering the poems of Rafael Guillén at The Alsop Review brought pure joy to this reader.
The Review features a dozen of this Spanish poet's works translated by Sandy McKinney. Ms. McKinney is familiar to those of us who discovered poetry in the neck of the Net called Gazebo. She's a talented poet and critic who neither minces words nor allows politics to influence her assessments. She's one of the few people who can point out a poem's flaws with manners, no easy feat, so that the recipient of the crit doesn't feel inclined to throw a dictionary at her.
In the bio blurb at Alsop, Sandy McKinney notes that the "proudest moment of her life will be when I'm Speaking, a bilingual edition of 28 of Guillén's poems with her translations, is presented by Northwestern University Press in the spring of 2001." If you're looking for someone to publish translations, you can't find a better press than this one. Northwestern claims awards for Fyodor Dostoevsky's Writer's Diary:Volume I, a National Book Award for Poetry for William Meredith's Effort at Speech,and other plaudits too numerous to include here.
The reputation of any press stems from the works it chooses to present, and Guillén's poetry will carry forward the momentum of quality for which Northwestern is known. That Alsophas managed to offer a sneak preview of these poetic gems is a literary coup. The poems themselves are presented at the lit site in the manner they will appear in the book; in both Spanish and English.
I like the entire selection, but my favorite of the poems is "Gesto Final, " or "The Final Gesture." The poem, with accentual consistency that Ms. McKinney manages to also convey in her translation, develops conceit on death with sensitivity that avoids maudlin sentiment yet allows us to consider the gesture that each of us will someday confront. One of the most touching passages is in the last five line segment, just before the poem shifts to four line segments that average five accents per line:
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