Skip to content
LALT-Iso-Black
  • menu
  • English
  • Español
Issue 11
Uncategorized

Three Poems from Of Death. Minimal Odes

  • by Hilda Hilst
Print Friendly, PDF & Email
  • August, 2019

Of Death. Minimal Odes

latin poems about death

Hilda Hilst

Editor’s Note:

Of Death. Minimal Odes, a verse collection by Brazilian poet Hilda Hilst translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin, was a recipient of the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. The prize jury commented on the book:

The first collection of Hilda Hilst’s poetry to be appear in English, Of Death. Minimal Odes is masterfully translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin. Hilda Hilst’s odes are searing, tender blasphemies. One is drawn to Of Death in the way we’re drawn to things that might be dangerous. These are poems that lure readers well beyond their best interests, regardless of whatever scars might be sustained. In language that is twisted, animalistic, yet at times plain, Eglin reveals another layer in the work of this Brazilian great.

We are proud to feature a selection of poems from Of Death. Minimal Odes in Latin American Literature Today. Click here to read the poems in the original Portuguese.


IX

Your hooves bandaged
so I won’t hear
your hard trot.
Is this, little mare,
how you’ll come for me?
Or because I thought you
severe and silent
you’ll come as a child
on a shard of china?
Lover
because I disdained you?
Or with the airs of a king
because I made you queen?

 

XV

As if you fit
on the crest
on the peak
on the obverse of the bone

I try to capture your body
your mountain, your reverse.

As if the lips looked for
their converse
that’s how I look for you
torsion of all depths.

Persecutory, I follow you
tether, muscle.
And you always resemble
everything that runs, time,
the current.

In my mouth. In the emptiness.
In the crooked nose.
Down river you run, silt
stump, towards me.

 

XVI

Horse, buffalo, little mare
I love you, friend, my death,
if you approach, I jump
as one who wants and doesn’t want
to see the hill, the meadow, the mound
on the other side, as one who wants
and doesn’t dare
touch your fur—gold

the bright red of your skin
as one who doesn’t want.

Translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin

  • Hilda Hilst

The Brazilian poet, playwright, fiction writer, and essayist, Hilda Hilst was born in 1930 and died in 2004. She is the author of forty books. Literary critics consider her to be one of the most important and controversial twentieth-century writers in the Portuguese language. She has been awarded many literary prizes. She graduated from USP (University of São Paulo) with a degree in Law. In her thirties, Hilst decided to leave the city of São Paulo in order to keep away from social life and concentrate on literature. She went to Campinas and lived in her house Casa do Sol until her death. Because of her strong personality, beauty, intelligence, and her eccentricities, and because Hilst consistently questioned and went against norms and traditions, the myth surrounding Hilst’s image has often overshadowed the importance of her work and the critical analysis of her oeuvre. With the republication of her work by Editora Globo, organized by Alcir Pécora in the early 2000s, Hilst’s work has started gaining more readers in Brazil. She was the author honored in the sixteenth FLIP (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty) in 2018.

  • Laura Cesarco Eglin
screenshot20190805at9

Laura Cesarco Eglin is the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst, (co•im•press), which won the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. Her translations from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician have appeared in a variety of journals, including Timber, Exchanges, Modern Poetry in Translation, Eleven Eleven, The Massachusetts Review, Cordella Magazine, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and The Puritan. Cesarco Eglin is the author of five poetry collections, including Calling Water by Its Name (trans. Scott Spanbauer; Mouthfeel Press), Occasions to Call Miracles Appropriate (The Lune), and Reborn in Ink (trans. Catherine Jagoe and Jesse Lee Kercheval; The Word Works). She is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books.

PrevPrevious“Miami Bitch” by Carlos Manuel Álvarez
Next“Translation is activism because it involves bringing one culture into another”: An Interview with Laura Cesarco EglinNext
RELATED POSTS

Telling the Story of Argentine Exile through the History of Books, Publishing, and Translation

By Alejandrina Falcón

Nota Bene: December 2023

By LALT Team

Giannina’s Doorknobs

By Sarah Ahmad

Footer Logo

University of Oklahoma
780 Van Vleet Oval
Kaufman Hall, Room 105
Norman, OK 73019-4037

  • Accessibility
  • Sustainability
  • HIPAA
  • OU Job Search
  • Policies
  • Legal Notices
  • Copyright
  • Resources & Offices
Updated 06/27/2024 12:00:00
Facebook-f X-twitter Instagram Envelope
Latin American Literature Today Logo big width
MAGAZINE

Current Issue

Book Reviews

Back Issues

Author Index

Translator Index

PUBLISH IN LALT

Publication Guidelines

Guidelines for Translators

LALT AND WLT

Get Involved

Student Opportunities

GET TO KNOW US

About LALT

LALT Team

Mission

Editorial Board

LALT BLOG
OUR DONORS
Subscribe
  • email
LALT Logo SVG white letters mustard background

Subscriptions

Subscribe to our mailing list.