A man closes his eyes,lets himself ride.The horse knows the way home.Like a lover in the darkwho lovesin parts,as lust wants,the man who returnscreates, then destroysthe yellow mesaunder the silk wind.1908 | RegresoUn hombre cierra los ojos,se deja conducir.De todas formasel caballo siempre vuelve.Como se acariciaen la oscuridad a un amantey se lo invoca por partes,discontinuosegún el deseo lo prefiera,el hombre que regresa cabalgandocompone y descomponela meseta amarilla bajo el viento suave.
1908 | Return
Claudia Prado
Translated from the Spanish
Feature Date
- September 1, 2024
Series
- Translation
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Published by Texas Tech University Press on March 1, 2024.
English Copyright © 2024 by Rebecca Gayle Howell.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Claudia Prado was born in Argentinian Patagonia. She is the author of three books of Spanish-language poetry: El interior de la ballena (Buenos Aires: Nusud, 2000), which received the bronze for the Concurso Régimen de Fomento a la Producción Literaria Nacional y Estímulo a la Industria Editorial del Fondo Nacional de las Artes; Viajar de noche (Buenos Aires: Editorial Limón, 2007); and Primero (Argentina: Editorial Caleta Olivia, 2019). In 2018, she was a participant at the New York Foundation for the Arts Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program and was named a Fellow of Utopian Practice at Culture Push (New York), awarded for interdisciplinary art that is accessible to all. Today, she makes her home in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rebecca Gayle Howell is a poet, translator, and editor. Her Best Book of the Year honors include those from The Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword INDIES Awards, The Nautilus Awards, The Banipal Prize (U.K.), Ms. Magazine, Library Journal, Book Riot, and Poets & Writers. Among Howell’s other awards are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Lubbock, Texas
Texas Tech
“These poems by Claudia Prado move me just as they did twenty-five years ago. A century of family stories sleeping inside the whale, set in the Patagonian Madryn where Prado once showed me her whales, immense and sweet as her beautiful poems.”
—Diana Bellessi
“Fully bilingual, El Interior de la Ballena | The Belly of the Whale follows one family’s migratory journey through Patagonia in an empowered examination and celebration of ancestry. Poet Claudia Prado has reimagined tales passed down for generations, spotlighting the silent endurance and pivotal roles of women, while Rebecca Gayle Howell’s translations remind us now more than ever that differences ‘require us to need each other.’ I was so mesmerized that I read the book in one sitting.”
—Ruben Quesada
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