The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out: Selected Poems by Ana Enriqueta Ter N (Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation)

Ana Enriqueta Terán is arguably Venezuela's finest poet. Celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, she is almost unknown among anglophones. Until now only a handful of her poems have been translated into English, giving at best a diluted impression of a uniquely intense imagination.

This bilingual edition reveals the power and beauty of this poet's Spanish poems through English versions of corresponding force. It invites readers to enter Terán's world--a world at once strongly Venezuelan and universally human, imbued with great beauty, sardonic humor, pitiless compassion, lucid wisdom, and joyful affirmation.

Selected from several volumes of Terán's work, these poems span half a century of composition and show an extraordinary range in both form and substance. Some are written in closed forms, some in free verse. Some are carefully evocative representations of the landscapes and cityscapes that have nourished the poet's intelligence and imagination. Others are dramatic character studies. All are infused with Terán's rare sensibility and realized through language that manages to be at once graceful, urgent, and explosive. This volume is a treasure for all lovers of poetry.

Deal Struck with Happiness

How much sweetness to make right the night

and this clutch of anemones

near thin smooth consoling stones,

stones havens of southern weather.

Of a woman who watches Cepheids quaver

among lightbursting mangroves.

Of a woman who offers cats-eyes and clematis

only, Islands, for the sake of setting right

her deal struck with happiness.

"Above all, the poetry of Ana Enriqueta Terán transmits movement and contrasting sound patterns. In his dynamic and often inspired translations, Marcel Smith recovers for us the sprung rhythms and eccentric visual shifts in Terán's poetry. Smith has taken the risky step of translating and transforming to capture an extraordinarily complex and dense poetry, one with few equivalents even in Spanish."--Gwen Kirkpatrick, University of California, Berkeley

This bilingual edition reveals the power and beauty of this poet's Spanish poems through English versions of corresponding force. It invites readers to enter Terán's world--a world at once strongly Venezuelan and universally human, imbued with great beauty, sardonic humor, pitiless compassion, lucid wisdom, and joyful affirmation.

Selected from several volumes of Terán's work, these poems span half a century of composition and show an extraordinary range in both form and substance. Some are written in closed forms, some in free verse. Some are carefully evocative representations of the landscapes and cityscapes that have nourished the poet's intelligence and imagination. Others are dramatic character studies. All are infused with Terán's rare sensibility and realized through language that manages to be at once graceful, urgent, and explosive. This volume is a treasure for all lovers of poetry.

Deal Struck with Happiness

How much sweetness to make right the night

and this clutch of anemones

near thin smooth consoling stones,

stones havens of southern weather.

Of a woman who watches Cepheids quaver

among lightbursting mangroves.

Of a woman who offers cats-eyes and clematis

only, Islands, for the sake of setting right

her deal struck with happiness.

Acknowledgments xvii

A Note about Sources xviii

FROM House Made of Utterance To a White Horse 3

The Name 5

Wordstone 7

Deal Struck with Happiness 9

The Eagle 11

Fit Vision of This Dark Side 13

Dreams 15

Third Try at the Mother House 43

Messages for the Older Brother 45

Music with Psalm Foot 53

Pebbles for Scrying 57

The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out 59

FROM Sonnets out of All My Seasons So much bread, so much oil 63

The strangers rattled at the door 65

She took in night in the pier glass 67

One only leaf, adagioed up 69

They who live there hurl their writings 71

Subtle in your fourteen lines surge 73

In the Suapure River 75

A puddle of shade, on its face 77

Wisdoms of uncertain silk cords 79

Music for lips, whirlwind the heart 81

The replies waver in a vain 83

Black, yellow, white as a subtle 85

FROM Albatross Albatross 89

Splintery Responsibility 91

Ascents and Yet Distances 93

Never Seen Fowl 95

Not Resting Yet 97

Will of the Torn Scream 99

FROM Autobiography in Tercets R?o Momboy 103

The Motat?n 107

Other Rivers 111

Invocation to the Mother 115