The Law of Conservation
Description
The Law of Conservation is a poetry collection intensely attuned to landscape, both geographic and metaphorical.
Borders blurred as cities cede to rural land; the body as a changing place on an equally unstable map; the subsoil of sexuality; the terrain of memory, both rich and painful; new countries traveled and new roots set down as an adult, navigating desire, loneliness, and love.
In the context of gender and sexual identity, Spada's work pays subtle, incisive attention to the inextricable relationship between transformation and conservation: transformation toward the experience of honoring and protecting our deepest and most abiding truths. At the same time, her poems also unsparingly explore the external shifts (in the speaker's surroundings and even her memories) that make it so challenging to retain an unassailable sense of self.
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Persons
Mariana Spada was born in Entre Ríos, Argentina, in 1979. She studied Literature in Santa Fe, Argentina, and lived in Buenos Aires for about a decade before moving to Barcelona, Spain, where she currently resides. The Law of Conservation is her first book.
Robin Myers is a Mexico City-based poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Robin's poetry has been selected for the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology and appears in journals such as the Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Annulet Poetry Journal, and Massachusetts Review, among others. Her collections have been published as bilingual English-Spanish editions in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- La primera descarga
- The First Shot
- Estival, ida y vuelta
- Summer, There and Back
- No da lo mismo
- It Does Matter
- La foto se tomó en una esquina
- The Photo Was Taken on a Corner
- Otro sol
- Another Sun
- Al paso
- Passing By
- Retorno
- Return
- ¿Cuándo lo supiste?
- When Did You Know?
- Los métodos de Mme. Curie
- The Methods of Mme. Curie
- La ley de conservación
- The Law of Conservation
- Chamarrita
- Chamarrita
- Una velocidad de escape
- The Speed of Flight
- Phnom Penh
- Phnom Penh
- Archimedis physica
- Archimedes' Principle
- Hubo planes de tomar el tren hasta La Plata
- There Were Plans to Take the Train All the Way to La Plata
- Post-Op
- Post-Op
- Nada nos preparó para esto
- No One Prepared Us for This
- Comamos
- Let's Eat
- Vamos a dar por zanjada la noche
- Calling It a Day
- Hernandarias
- Hernandarias
- Bratislava
- Bratislava
- ¡Qué tentación las cerezas!
- The Cherries Are So Tempting!
- Trío
- Trio
- Poema del final del día
- Poem at Day's End
- Ahora que soy toda una mujer
- Now That I'm a Woman Through and Through
- Groenlandia
- Greenland
- O como un cuchillo
- Or Like a Knife
- Se cae el cielo en Chamartín
- The Sky Is Falling in Chamartín
- Ella Casey y La Red de Redes
- Ella Casey and the Information Superhighway
- Las condiciones de reproducción
- Conditions of Reproduction
- Teodicea
- Theodicy
- Entre la plaza y el cementerio
- Between the Park and the Cemetery
- Otro estado de las cosas
- Another State of Things
- En la sala de espera
- In the Waiting Room
- Un arco-iris sin tormenta a la vista
- A Rainbow with No Storm in Sight
- Ahora sí, la tormenta
- And Now, the Storm
- Algunos varones
- Some Men
- Toyako
- Toyako
- Ferreri Ganadera
- Ferreri Livestock
- Un hombre vino a casa anoche
- A Man Came by Last Night
- Todo tiende al futuro sin remedio
- Everything Tilts Incorrigibly toward the Future
- Cena
- Dinner
- Teoría de cuerdas
- String Theory
- La última rama de este árbol se quiebra acá
- This Tree's Last Branch Breaks Here
- La carrera espacial
- The Space Race
- Ninguna de las dos creció
- Neither One of Us Grew Up
- Mi género fue lo que me hizo esto
- My Gender Did This to Me
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
