THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE: POEMAS REUNIDOS DE LUIS HERNÁNDEZ EN INGLÉS

The University of Chicago Press Books ha publicado The School of Solitude. Collected Poems de Luis Hernández, con traducción y prólogo de Anthony Geist. Son 167 páginas. Aquí la info en inglés: 

Translated and with an Introduction by Anthony Geist

167 pages | 9 halftones | 5 1/2 x 8

Peruvian poet Luis Hernández is legendary in his native country. Haunted by addiction and spending periodic reclusion in rehabilitation centers, Hernández was exceptionally gifted in his youth, publishing three books of poetry by the time he was twenty-four. He did not publish another book before his untimely death at thirty-six, but he was not silent—he filled notebooks with poems, musical notations, quotes, translations, musings, newspaper clippings, and drawings.

           

Derived from these notebooks, The School of Solitude is the first book of Hernández’s poetry in English. The haunting voice of Hernández evokes an irrevocably distant past, with the poems contemplating happiness and joy, love and fulfillment, yet always with a sense of sadness, solitude, and dream. Including rare images from Hernández’s notebooks, as well as several poems never before published in any language, The School of Solitude will be read not only for its powerful poetry and imagery, but also as a means to learn more about this enigmatic Latin American poet and the mystery of his life and work.

REVIEW QUOTES

Reginald Gibbons, Northwestern University, author of Slow Trains Overhead

“In this collection of poems by Luis Hernández, prepared specifically for this edition, the poet’s offhanded wit of everyday melancholy flashes out often. Some of the poems create the tone and language of work written out of the immediate moment, to protect some part of it for a moment longer, since ‘living is made out of glass.’ Others shift to the tone of elegy not only for persons but as if for the world. In only a few years, neglectful of self, perhaps, but burning with creativity, Hernández seems to have spanned the poetic development of a much longer lifetime. What a great gesture of faith not only in this poet but also in poetry itself that the work of this poet, ‘former welterweight champion’ of poetry, has been kept alive for readers in Spanish and is now offered to readers in English.”

William O’Daly, poet and translator of Pablo Neruda

“A deep humanity and seductive, bluesy rhythms pervade these poems of Luis Hernández, as does a mindful quality and emotional symmetry that rise from the ceaseless interaction between the natural order and disorder of experience. In taut, spare lines, the pursuit of love and even the moments of apparent randomness turn on precise, simply stated observation and paradoxical memories, flashes of humor, and beautiful, enduring loss. ‘I don’t remember your eyes / Only what they saw.’ Anthony Geist provides skillful, honest translations—poems in English—which in their courage and conviction recreate the integrity of the originals.”

http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/S/bo19283222.html