The Trees: Selected Poems 1967-2004 - Softcover

Montejo, Eugenio

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844710335 ISBN 13: 9781844710331

Publisher: Salt Publishing, 2004

Synopsis

Featuring "La Tierra Giró para Acercarnos" (The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer) from the Oscar-nominated film 21 Grams, this new translation of selected poems and prose by Venezuela's leading poet Eugenio Montejo is translated from the original Spanish by Australian poet Peter Boyle.

About this title

About the Author

Eugenio Montejo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1938. He is the author of numerous books of poetry: Elegos (1967), Muerte y memoria (1972), Algunas palabras (1976), Terredad (1979), Tropico absoluto (1982), Alfabeto del mundo (1986), Adios al siglo XX (1992), El azul de la tierra (1997), Partitura de la cigarra (1999) and Tiempo Transfigurado (2001). He has also published two collections of essays: La ventana oblicua and El taller blanco. In 1998 Eugenio Montejo received Venezuela's National Prize for Literature. Peter Boyle is an Australian poet. His four collections of poetry are Coming home from the world (1994), The Blue Cloud of Crying (1997), What the painter saw in our faces (2001), and Museum of Space (2004). A selection of his translations of Cesar Vallejo, I am going to speak of hope, was published by the Peruvian Consulate, Sydney in 1999. He lives in Sydney where he works as a teacher. Miguel Gomes is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. He is an essayist and a short-story writer.

Review

The Trees, a selection of Eugenio Montejo's poetry from the last forty years, shares with Kaplinski a fascination with natural images; like Malarme, with endings and beginnings. Peter Boyles rhythmic and limpid translations of the Venezuelan writer aim to fill an absence of Montejo's works available in English.--Viki Holmes "Poetry Wales "

Montejo sees his poetry as 'a melodious chess game we play in solitude with God' but distances himself from the 'political ritual of churches', comments which capture the nature of a poetry that is spiritual but removed from any dogma. His subjects are wide-ranging: the essence of objects of the natural and domestic world, the dangers of consumerism, travel and cities, art, his relationship with family and culture. However, the backdrop is always the insignificance of our individual experience in contrast to life's continuity, our task simply to ensure 'that the song will endure'.--Belinda Cooke "Shearsman "

Like all good translations these versions have the feel and stature of an original; poems of beauty adn loss, the wonder in the everyday - a thrush singing in a tree, a rooster's crow, the 'earthdom' of things, as Boyle translates Montejo's neologism terredad. This is deeply spiritual poetry for agnostic sensibilities, poetry written, Montejo notes in 'Fragments', as 'a prayer spoken to a God who only exists while the prayer lasts.' for here is a volume, both in original and translation, that understands the sacrament of poetry, the power - and fragility - of the thought once expressed, of the word spoken: "the bird you hear singing is in Greek," Montejo warns in his version of Cavafy's 'Ithaca' 'Don't translate it'. We can only be grateful that Boyle ignored this advice, to the immeasurable benefit of us all.--Josephine Balmer "Modern Poetry in Translation "

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt Publishing
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1844710335
• ISBN 13: 9781844710331
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 184