The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out: Selected Poems by Ana Enriqueta Terán

by Ana Enriqueta Terán, Marcel Smith (Translator)

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.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 31, 2002

About the author

Ana Enriqueta Terán (Valera, Venezuela, 1918) is a poet and diplomat. She is one of the fundamental voices of the Venezuelan poetry of the twentieth century. She worked outside her home country on various occasions, serving as a delegate to the Asamblea de la Comisión Interamericana de Mujeres in Buenos Aires in 1949. In 1952, she retired from her diplomatic career to dedicate herself to poetry. She was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1989, and she was granted a doctorate honoris causa from the Universidad de Carabobo in the same year. Her poetic work, marked by great formal precision, began with Al norte de la sangre [North of the blood] (1946). Piedra de habla [Stone of speech] (2014), published in Venezuela by Biblioteca Ayacucho, is one of her most recent titles.

Reviews

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique and genuine style!

[…] and my own song might have kept me blind.
*
All slides, goes by, remains outside
the season, year, moment; all moves
to one side, not bruising the hour,

the lofty smitten idea.
All comes back together to let
river pass without touching wind.

[Raquel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poemas bonitos, cheios de feminilidade, memórias antigas e laços de família que se desfazem, pouco a pouco.

*

"Es tanta soledad, soledad tanta
como del ave que acrecienta altura
y traspasa la luz y la quebranta."

"Todas palabras doy en lumbre quieta
para vivir erguida en un soneto."

"En tus catorce versos surgen finas
niña y mujer que fui..."

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

🏵️ THE POETESS COUNTS TO 100 AND BOWS OUT: Selected Poems by Ana Enriqueta Terán, tr. from the Spanish by Marcel Smith, 2003 Princeton University Press.

#ReadtheWorld21 📍 Venezuela

Todavía no reposo
Reposar en no color, no aroma, tampoco caída o salvarse.
Iniciar descanso en ufanías de salud;
sufrimiento de rosa única vuelte hacia juventud, deseos, últimos intentos de belleza, última, taciturna, rosa-exprasíon ante un espejo recamado de propia imagen.
Imagen superpuesta a secuencia de escueto rango.
Rostro alguna vez cruzado por aves altísimas como punto final de poema no escrito centrando la página
.
Not Resting Yet
To lie down in no color, no aroma, either downcast or to save yourself.
To initiate a work break, putting on healthy airs, rosy foreberance, unique turn towards youth, yearnings, beauty's last proposals,
ultimate, taciturn, rose-expression before a mirror cross-stitched with your own image.
Image overlaid on a sequence of unadorned rank.
Face at some time traversed by birds way high up like the terminal point of an unwritten poem in the middle of a page


First literary visit to Venezuela, and I'm glad that it was for a #womenintranslation poetry collection! The collection gathers Terán's sonnets and other longer poems over several decades of her life. Apparently well-known and celebrated in Venezuela, this collection brings her work to a larger audience through translation.

One of my favorite pieces,"Los Sueños" / "Dreams", was much too long to include here unfortunately... It is a surrealist scape that rivals Salvador Dali - people's faces fall off their heads and talk from the floor, the dreamer hears and see a symphony of color and music from a field of sunflowers, and fantastical animals accompany on strange adventures...

Venezuelan literature is harder to come by in translation, so it was good to find this ebook available through Princeton University Press's Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation.

[Linda Vergara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ella y Jose, Es clásica. Deliciosamente clásica.

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poets choose words
for more than meaning
rhythm
rhyme
soft lilting flutes
hard thrusting bass
words striking notes

Bringing you to the melée
heat pressing
sweat itching
fists and blood

A translation is
at best
the police blotter
over morning coffee

I can't join her melée
I can't breathe her words
But the poetess
The poetess still has her clear gaze
her fists up
and is not bowing out

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could have read these poems in the original Spanish. Maybe someday I'll be able to.