Azure Cloister : Thirty-five Poems

New translations of poems by prominent Peruvian poet Carlos Germán Belli.
 
This selection of poems by internationally renowned Peruvian poet Carlos Germán Belli tempers a dark, ironic vision of worldly injustice with the “red midnight sun” of hope. Belli’s contemplative verses express faith in language, in bodily joy, and in artistic form. These thirty-five poems explore public and domestic spaces of confinement and freedom, from paralysis to the ease of a bird in its “azure cloister.” 
 
Translations by Karl Maurer retain Belli’s original meter, follow his complex syntax, and meet the challenges of his poetic language, which ranges from colloquial Peruvian slang to the ironic use of seventeenth-century Spanish. This bilingual edition also includes notes and reflections on Belli and on the art of translation. Beyond introducing American readers to a major presence in world poetry, The Azure Cloister offers a fresh approach to the translation of contemporary verse in Spanish.
 

Carlos Germán Belli, born in Lima, Perú, in 1927, is considered one of the most prominent poets among his generation in Latin America and Spanish literature. He has published over twenty-five books, has received a Guggenheim grant, honored with the Pablo Neruda Prize in Ibero-American Poetry, and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in 2007.

Karl Maurer (1948–2015) was professor of classics at the University of Dallas. He is the author of Interpolation in Thucydides and has translated works by Borges, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Jacob Balde, and Virgil, among others.

Christopher Maurer is professor of Spanish at Boston University. He is editor and translator of Sebastian’s Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca, New Letters to a Young Poet, and The Complete Perfectionist, all published by Swan Isle Press.