Reseña del libro de poesía La tumba del marinero por Luna Miguel (La Bella Varsovia, 2013):
Pues, qué belleza. Qué putrefacción. A veces huele, ese libro. A veces huele incluso muy mal. Porque ese libro es una tumba, y el cuerpo todavía está vivo - lleno de gusanos y palabras retorciéndose.
Azucár como arma. Cánceres que se crecen y que se propagan.
La tumba del marinero comparte unos poemas que ya han sido publicados en la edición norteamericana que se llama Bluebird and Other Tattoos (The Scrambler, 2012). Sin embargo, la mayoría son nuevos. Leí los poemas en voz alta, sentado en una muelle del lago Michigan. Me parecía apropriado. El poemario (o bien novela política) trata de enfermedades, de amores (que quizá sean enfermedades), de disgustos.
Vengan a enterarse por qué “la vida no puede ser experimentada ni por los vivos ni por los muertos”. Que lean a Luna Miguel.
Another marvelous, hideous collection of poetry from Luna Miguel. In a way, the whole book squirms and oozes, speaking of disease and love, seasickness and disgust. But it’s not an ugly book - it’s a muddy book in the way you can enjoy squishing your feet in spring puddles. We all want to see our insides, even when we’re frightened at first glance. And that kind of pull, of the sickness that we feel inside, is the force of Luna’s “The Sailor’s Grave”.
Some of my favorite poems:
Four: Monogamy One: Seams (also appears in Bluebirds) Eight: Bad Blood (a long segment in which things grow and grow and then shrink into the end of the world)
If your Spanish will serve, order La tumba del marinero. Hopefully we’ll be seeing much more of Luna’s work translated for the US!
Entrevista con la majísima Luna Miguel en Canal-L, charlando sobre su nuevo libro La tumba del marinero (La Bella Varsovia, 2013).
La crisis de los veintipico - Antonio J. Rodríguez
Alice #3 - Ben Brooks - my double-translation into English available here.
Ser una princesa en una torre - Ana Carrete
I guess if people were interested, I could translate the other two stories. It just seems odd to translate a text originally written in English back into English cause, well, you lose a lot of style.
Poetry is not dead, re-print. And my new book “La tumba del marinero”, very soooooonnnn!
qué ganas de leerlos!
Check out my translation of a poem from Luna Miguel’s forthcoming book of poetry, La tumba del marinero - published in shabby doll house.
Mira lo que encontré en el buzón :3
Luna Miguel has written a chaotic guide to what is happening in the United States regarding 10 young American writers for PlayGround Articulos a Spanish magazine. She profiles Blake Butler, Dorothea Laskey, Tao Lin, Ben Lerner, Ana Carrete, Steve Roggenbuck, Kate Zambreno, Richard Chiem, Sam Pink and Marie Calloway and gives Spain a preview of what to expect from each of their writings. I recommend that you read it and then order Luna’s first book of poems released in the United States now.
I did a quick translation of Luna Miguel’s intro to the list - I guess if anyone was interested, I could do the authors’ bios as well…
10 Young Writers Who Kick Ass. Chaotic Guide to What’s Going On in the US.
Who will be the decisive writers of the 21st Century? It’s still too early to tell, but it sure is time for making wagers. Luna Miguel has pored over the next generation of American authors and poets and brings us a selection of 10 talents who we’ll be hearing (and reading) a lot of in the coming years.
A few years ago it was impossible to think that our publishing scene would have room for young authors from “the outside”. If we’d hardly had room for the “insiders”, who would dare to bet on someone who might not even be able to come to our country to present their book? That’s a pretty risky undertaking. A lot is said about the bad intentions of publishers when they put out something ‘new’, they say ‘Oh! They just think about sales, they just love promotable fresh meat!”, and how mistaken they are, I think, since betting on new talents is always risky.
Fortunately, we’ve got a short but good catalog of such bets. Many of them come not just from our stock, but also from France, the UK, Italy, and above all, the US. In fact, for some time I’ve been really interested in what goes on in this last country, perhaps because its scene is much easier to find and digest. You could spend hours and hours trying to find the blog of a young French poet, but, for some reason - maybe their great abundance or their skilled handle of media-, the blog of a Brooklynite poet will appear on our screens in under a second.
I first read Tao Lin’s blog six years ago, without really knowing who he was, At that point, he was 22 or 23 and had published his first books of poems and short stories in his country. His blog opened up a world of possibilities to me. While here the literary scene still seemed “clumsy” on the Internet, there you could find thousands of things.
Not so long ago, maybe in 2010, I became a regular of what, to me, is the best US literature blog. It’s called HTML Giant and it’s extremely entertaining. There you can find news about great authors, but also about very young people and small publishers, too. A New Directions book (equivalent to Mandadori or Lumen?) is just as likely to be reviewed here as a book from Civil Coping Mechanisms (equivalent to La Bella Varsovia or of Jeckill&Jill?). Starting from this blog I began to read - or try to read- many authors who fortunately out publishing houses are beginning to release. That’s the case with Tao Lin himself, Blake Butler, Ben Lerner, and so many others who, little by little, will be appearing in Spanish bookstores.
So, I’ve decided to make a list of those who, for me, are the most interesting of this “New Wave”, and tell you why I like them. Why they kick ass. Why I think you’ve got to read them.
