To predict the fate of the poems of an author canonized in life—or, on the other hand, of some obscure poet, unknown or brilliant—is to take a shot in the dark. It could be argued that this is the case for any work of literature. And I believe it, but the history of poetry nullifies—or rules out—any equivalence: poetry’s ancientness is unparalleled by any other literary genre. It came before the Ancient Greeks, found for the first time in writing in Mesopotamia, in the Epic of Gilgamesh. It goes without saying, more than four millenia have passed since this surprising poem was composed. Octavio Paz compared poetry to a dolphin, able to plunge into the ocean of time and come back up centuries later like it was nothing, with not even a scratch. He was right. Poetry is consubstantial with the history of humankind; no society has gone without it. We believe something more: no society has entirely forgotten it. That is why we return, every so often, to poets and their images, to restore this secret dialogue with the unsayable.
The poem—that strange mirror that reflects the self, the other, and the mystery of both—is not foreign to us. So, for this cover feature, we have chosen Mexican poet Coral Bracho, winner in 2023 of the thirty-third edition of the Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances. Bracho has been publishing since 1977, and is an essayist as well. Her long career was fittingly recognized with this prestigious honor late last year. This dossier, assembled by our editor Arturo Gutiérrez Plaza, contains writing by Blanca Luz Pulido, Javier Alvarado y Verónica Murguía. The brief bilingual selection of poems by Coral Bracho that accompanies their essays was translated by U.S. poet and translator Forrest Gander. In 2003, when Coral Bracho received the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia, she said, “For poetry, to enter into the territories of language means to recover the parts of language that have worn out or overshadowed its everyday use.” And this is precisely what drew the Premio FIL’s judges to her work: Coral Bracho’s tremendous ability to make of the act of naming an exercise as much of beauty as of precision.
This issue’s second dossier was put together by Argentine writer and editor Vera Land, and centers on something our Argentine friends do very well: Spanish-language rock music. But that’s not all: writing about music, and about rock bands in particular, is a long-held tradition on both sides of the Andes. So, at LALT, we wanted to take note of this phenomenon, which has always brought together great Argentine writers and journalists. We have titled the dossier “Literature and Rock,” unrhetorically and unhaltingly, like a naked blade on a dark street. We are happy to walk down this route through music, literature, and journalism. Besides Vera Land, the dossier features writing by Walter Lezcano and Humphrey Inzillo on Suárez and Rosario Bléfari, Patricio Rey y los Redonditos de Ricota, and Chilean band Los Tres. “The dream can’t leave us behind; we are the dream,” the legendary Enrique Symns wrote more than two decades ago in the equally legendary Argentine magazine Cerdos & Peces. And it’s true: those of us who were born listening to rock—and who, like myself, bore witness in the eighties to how Argentine bands crossed the Andes to bring us this unthinkable music, written in our own language—will never forget how, at the same time, we were reading poetry books purchased on the street. There was a time when literature and rock made us travel and trip, unstoppable, as if it were all a dream: our dream.
As I’ve said before, we conceived of our annual essay contest as a sort of bulwark, a line of resistance against the mechanized writing styles of the academy. We favor the essay that is exploratory, friendlier to doubt and critique than to the forced ideological certainties that now pollute even the freest academic spaces. In this regard, we are happy to publish in this issue the first finalist essay from this year’s contest, written by Lina Gabriela Cortés of Colombia. The essay is titled “Being Viralata.” And this new issue brings much more besides. In our section on classic authors, we include a brief selection from the letters of Rosario Castellanos to Ricardo Guerra, written between 1952 and 1953—a true gem from the history of Mexican literature, translated by Nancy Jean Ross. In the interview section, we feature Juan Camilo Rincón’s conversation with Peruvian writer Santiago Roncagliolo and Fernando Valcheff-García’s with Argentine writer Agustina Bazterrica, author of the disturbing novel Tender Is the Flesh. And, finally, Eduardo Suárez talks with Mexican writer Brenda Navarro, who reminds us that literature need not necessarily have a message. We can only agree.
On her end, our translation editor, Denise Kripper, has organized two remarkable dossiers. The first, a full selection of works “Seeking Publisher,” is an open window onto the publishing world for literature in translation. This dossier features excerpts from as-yet unpublished works in translation by Mexican poet Víctor Cabrera, Cuban writer and journalist Jorge Olivera Castillo, and Mexican novelist Emiliano Monge. The other dossier, as always, consists of Translation Previews. In this issue, we feature the essay collection Planes Flying over a Monster by Mexican writer Daniel Saldaña París, translated by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman; The Trees by Bolivian writer Claudia Peña Claros, translated by a friend of the magazine, Robin Myers; and, finally, Fog at Noon by Colombian writer Tomás González, in translation by Andrea Rosenberg.
We never tire of building bridges. In this issue, our readers will find our permanent sections on poetry, fiction, Indigenous literature, and Brazilian literature, plus other essays and the odd surprise hidden in the electronic pages of Latin American Literature Today.
I’ll conclude this note recalling what Chilean poet Jorge Teillier told us so many times: “Poetry must be as commonplace as the sky that spills over us.” Coral Bracho’s poetry lives up to this dictate with which we judge certain works that may be within arm’s reach, but are no less complex for it. And I’m happy for it, as all her readers should be.
Translated by Arthur Malcolm Dixon
