Horns rise up with force, igneous, aglow,
to burst apart the mysteries of time,
while scribes revive prophetic words, divine,
on pure papyrus, salvaged long ago.
A bilingual treasure trove, that is the Portuguese poetry of Leonor Scliar-Cabral and the stellar rendering into English, by her trusted translator Alexis Levitin. Translation is an art and interpretation - delving deep into the realm of Scliar-Cabral's letters, Levitin crafts sonnets that feel sacred and mysterious.
Lenore Scliar-Cabral's Consecration of the Aleph Bet-startling, profound, masterfully composed and erudite-belongs in the good company it keeps, taking its place beside Rimbaud's Voyelles, Karl Shapiro's The Alphabet, Terrance Hayes' How to Draw a Perfect Circle, and Molly Peacock's Alphabetique among others. A delight, a tutorial, a meditation-of which, yes, Borges would heartily approve.
-Danny Lawless, Editor of Plumes
Leonor Scliar-Cabral writes poems of intensity and great beauty, marrying intellect and passion, as exemplified in her extraordinary collection Consecration of the Aleph Bet. This collection of 22 sonnets, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is a tour de force: The sonnet form has rarely served so expansive an undertaking as it brilliantly serves here. Each letter's sonnet embraces history, geography, religion, and the human condition, as in these powerful evocative lines from two poems: "Like Job, we're prisoners of straightened spaces / ...Our hangman is a silent clock, stopped dead, / ... Garroted, we gaze ahead." and "A long Phoenician keel with fanning oars / for seven moons plows through the darkened seas..." Consecration of the Aleph Bet includes the original Portuguese text and Alexis Levitin's sensitive translation, expertly maintaining the original's meaning and the musicality of the demanding sonnet form. Scliar-Cabral's haunting complex poems amply reward repeated readings.
-Miriam N. Kotzin, author of Debris Field
Reihe
Sprache
Produkt-Hinweis
Broschur/Paperback
Klebebindung
Maße
Höhe: 203 mm
Breite: 127 mm
Dicke: 7 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-963475-54-8 (9781963475548)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Leonor Scliar-Cabral is Professor Emerita at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. She continues to work as a psycholinguist in the field of literacy training. Her poetry has appeared in Brazil in the following volumes: Sonnets, Memories of the Sephardim, Of Erotic Senectitude, The Sun Fell on the Guaíba, Consecration of the Aleph Bet, and The Book of Joseph. All of the poems included in her collection Consecration of the Aleph Bet have appeared in the following literary magazines: Amethyst Review, Blue Unicorn, Epoch, Home Planet News, Measure, niv, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Per Contra, Plume, and Poetica Magazine. Poems drawn from her recent Book of Joseph have been accepted by Amethyst, Blue Unicorn, International Poetry Review, and Metamorphoses.
