Description
Poetry. Translation. The book is a collection of Arabic-Andalusian poems; intimate moments which the author encountered in a group of early writings from the Andalusian area of Spain, and to which she eloquently responds. Her original poems appear, as well as the poems in Arabic, and translations in Spanish and English.
"Federico Garcia Lorca's last book, published posthumously, Diván del Tamarit, was inspired by Spanish translations from the medieval Arabic poets of Al-Andalus. The same passionate inspiration evokes these new poems by Susan Thackrey, only this time they come transformed, constructed and reconstructed. There are the poems from the Arabic; then the Spanish translations by scholar and literary critic Emilio Gomez Garcia; then Thackrey's devastatingly concise translations from Spanish to English; and, lastly and also firstly, her poems in response to the Andalusian work. Here are traces upon violent traces of memory, heart's openness, the apparition of the beloved, visions of nostalgia in the east wind—in short, the vernacular love lyric in multiple languages and eras."—Norma Cole
Author Bio
Susan Thackrey, a poet who lives and works in San Francisco, began to compose poetry at the age of three. She was an inaugurating student in the Poetics Program at New College in San Francisco in 1980, and studied with Robert Duncan and Diane di Prima formally and informally over a number of years. Thackrey has given invitational lectures on Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and George Oppen, including as a keynote speaker at the George Oppen Conference in Buffalo, and most recently on Duncan's The H.D. Book for the San Francisco Poetry Center. Since reading Homer in Greek over a five year period with Robert Duncan and some of her poet contemporaries, an important and lively part of her life in poetry has almost always included variously focused and long-lived reading groups with other poets. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Five Fingers, Hambone, Talisman, Traverse, and VOLT. Current books in print are ANDALUSIA (Chax Press, 2015), Empty Gate (Listening Chamber), and GEORGE OPPEN: A RADICAL PRACTICE (O Books and The San Francisco Poetry Center, 2001).
Author City: USA