Description
Poetry. Latinx Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Seth Michelson. If Paul Celan's ghost sang from inside the pit of a cherry... if each slow stroke of a comb through cool, dark hair could be graphed into language, it might sing THE RED SONG. Melisa Machado's first collection in English is a subversive, prophetic incantation and a magical geography of the body. In short, pulselike refrains, first published as text messages, talismans of the body's fragility—collarbones, ear bones, mouths, tongues, waists—become so many zones of alchemical opening. In lucid, spacious translation by Seth Michelson, lapped by the ghosts of Celan and Marosa di Giorgio, THE RED SONG is at once ritual and meditation, confession and encryption, "abyss and sky," "vocal prayer" and vision.
Author Bio
Seth Michelson has published sixteen books of original poetry and poetry in translation, and the bilingual-Spanish poetry anthology Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention, with all proceeds going to a legal defense fund for undocumented, incarcerated youth. Honors for his work include an NEA Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Mellon Foundation fellowship, and his work has been translated into Hindi, Italian, Malayalam, Slovenian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and other languages. He teaches the poetry of the hemispheric Americas at Washington and Lee University, where he founded and directs the Center for Poetic Research.
Author City: LEXINGTON, VA USA
Melisa Machado was born in Durazno, Uruguay, in 1966. She lives in Montevideo. She is a poet, journalist, writer, art analyst and therapist. Her books Ritual de las Primicias (1994), El lodo de la Estirpe (2005), Adarga (2000), Jamba de Flores Negras (2006) and Marjal o Animal (2008) were collected in Rituales (2011). El Canto Rojo was first published by the Sediento Ediciones (Mexico) in 2013. Her poems have been included in several anthologies, including El Amplio Jardín (2005), Nada es igual después de la poesía: Cincuenta poetas uruguayos del medio siglo, 1955-2005 (2005) and The World Record, (2012). Her work has previously been translated into English, Italian and Swedish.
Author City: MONTEVIDEO URU