Helene Cardona's Blog - Posts Tagged "imagination"

Book Giveaway For Dreaming My Animal Selves: Le Songe de Mes Ames Animales:

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sho...

Into the liminal space between dreams and conscious thought slips this slim enchantment. I read these poems aloud in French, then silently in English, and once I came to the end, I turned back and started again....

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

...Hélène Cardona's poetry is exquisite, sensual, mysterious. She shows the body and soul seeking harmony, batting against the bars of the conscious mind to be released into flights of imagination in verses at once earthy and ethereal.

To read the whole review:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I'm thrilled to bits to announce that BEYOND ELSEWHERE (White Pine Press, 2016) by Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, my translation of Plus loin qu'ailleurs (Editions du Cygne) has been awarded a prestigious Hemingway Grant, huge thanks to the Cultural Services | French Embassy in the US. With all my gratitude to Dennis Maloney.
Cover Art: “Mystery” by Barbara Zaring.
Advance praise:
"This incandescent metonym of light is, writ small, a marriage of eastern and western wisdoms—a Bildungsroman describing the arc of a young man's journey from innocence, through passion and despair, to the great clarity of spiritual understanding. Arnou-Laujeac's intensely visual account, clothed in lyrical image and visionary flame, in Cardona's transcendent translation, easily carries us along in his brightly burning chariot in quest of the Divine."
—Sidney Wade
"Beyond Elsewhere by French poet Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac, and translated by Hélène Cardona is a wonderfully lyric, mesmerizing poetic meditation on desire, love, the soul, and spirituality. Beyond Elsewhere defies definition, hovering in that physical space somewhere above us, just beyond reach, but visible in a breathless lyrical cloud. As Arnou-Laujeac states: “I now know human passion is exclusive, symbiotic, psychotropic, but that the key is the spell eluding it, the time that tears it to pieces.” Arnou-Laujeac's poems are psychotropic — a beautiful new voice in poetry."
—Victoria Chang
"This is the absolute dawn," Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac declares in the final pages of Beyond Elsewhere, a dazzling hymn to the currents of desire that shape each individual life. This is a testament to the ways in which love lights an invisible path to the morning when "Everything here is an Elsewhere." Do not miss the chance to take this exhilarating journey.
—Christopher Merrill
"Hélène Cardona’s new translation confirms again her exquisite powers and imagination in turning Arnou-Laujeac’s amazing work into an English classic. She X-rays the original, and comes out with an inner picture faithful to beauty and the author’s flowing dexterity. Her singing flare illumines the English version, which is now the original. Discover Hélène's invitation to voyage."
—Willis Barnstone

Goodreads giveaway for Life in Suspension:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

"Life in Suspension is a love song, a hymn to goodness and beauty."
—La Cause Littéraire

This is a collection of poetry to be savored slowly and enjoyed again and again.
—Readers' Favorite, 5 Star Review

"Dappled with transparent imagery, like the Mediterranean sunlight she grew up with, Hélène Cardona's poems offer a vivid self-portrait as scholar, seer and muse."
—John Ashbery, winner of the PulitzerPrize, National Book Award, Griffin International Poetry Prize, MacArthur "Genius" Grant, and a National Humanities Medal

In this bilingual edition of her poems Hélène Cardona is our contemporary ecstatic, time-traveler, and shape-shifter. Behind the dreamlike atmosphere of her poems lies a fierce will to discover beauty, to resurrect ancient enchantments, and to defend enigmas of the spirit. "I like transforming into an animal, / devouring who I was," she writes. Her luminous poems celebrate the imagination's power to dignify and exalt our highest yearnings.
—Lee Upton, winner of a Pushcart Prize, National Poetry Series Award, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America

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To celebrate the 3rd printing of Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry) I created a giveaway:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/sh...

Enter for a chance to win a signed copy of the new printing of Life in Suspension, called “a vivid self-portrait as scholar, seer and muse” by John Ashbery.

Life in Suspension is hailed as visionary by Richard Wilbur. It explores consciousness, the power of place, and ancestral roots. It is poetry of alchemy and healing, a gateway to the unconscious and the dream world.
Stephen Yenser calls Life in Suspension “a terrific and singular achievement,” and Joanne Harris declares it deeply spiritual, “a tour de force of language and phonetics.”

"This is poetry with layers of complexity made of lace — a magic carpet ride, not like anything else around."
—Grace Cavalieri, The Washington Independent Review of Books

"Extraordinary, magical, and poignant."
—Guy Sangster-Adams, The Cultural Pick

"In this bilingual edition of her poems Hélène Cardona is our contemporary ecstatic, time-traveler, and shape-shifter. Behind the dreamlike atmosphere of her poems lies a fierce will to discover beauty, to resurrect ancient enchantments, and to defend enigmas of the spirit. "I like transforming into an animal, / devouring who I was," she writes. Her luminous poems celebrate the imagination's power to dignify and exalt our highest yearnings."
—Lee Upton

Winner of the Pinnacle Book Award for Best Bilingual Poetry Book and the Readers' Favorite Book Award in Poetry.