“Childhood can’t be experienced by the living nor the dead, because the living don’t remember and the dead awaken skinless. Childhood can only be experienced by the sick and the crazy, I said. Like life and like death and like love, perhaps. That’s what mourning is like. A long, shared loneliness. The loneliness of a crazed lover. Of the carnivorous bird. Of the the bed that doesn’t squeak. Of a child that doesn’t know how to imagine.”

fragmento del poema HUMAN AFTER ALL de Luna Miguel, publicado en el libro Bluebird and Other Tattoos. La traducción es mía.

I love Luna Miguel’s poems, especially the way in which this publication has been split into sections by approximate date of writing. One theme that seems to expose itself recurrently is that of sickness and disease, which is haunting to watch develop over the span of the collection. Even the book itself is really quite visually appealing. Unfortunately, I find some of the translations into English to be misleading, if not entirely incorrect. Phrases in the subjunctive are often ignored, greatly affecting the meaning of the resulting English verses. That’s not to say that every poem suffers in translation; Jeremy Spencer manages to pull off quite well most of the shorter poems, and even some of the longer ones as well. However, it’s a bit disappointing that Luna’s first publication in the English-speaking world was put out so hurriedly. Hopefully Luna’s next publication-in-translation will address these issues.