The Insistence of Harm
The Insistence of Harm
Born in Granada, Spain, in 1980, Fernando Valverde is widely considered one of the top young poets writing in Spanish today. Valverde is a leading figure in a movement of contemporary poets known as the Poetry of Uncertainty, and he has received some of the most significant awards for poetry in Spanish. This bilingual edition of his book The Insistence of Harm introduces English-language readers to some of his latest, most exciting work. The Insistence of Harm is a series of poignant lyric poems that takes readers from India to the Balkans to Spain and to Latin America, exploring the nature of “harm” in its various guises—war, disease, heartbreak, suicide. The poems grapple with both the reality of loss and the distance that language imposes on it. The English translations by Allen Josephs and Laura Juliet Wood effectively capture both tone and content while attending to subtle nuances of the original Spanish, bringing a new and important voice to students of Spanish and poetry readers alike. A volume in the series Contemporary Spanish-Language Poetry in Translation, edited by Allen Josephs, funded by the University of West Florida
“Voted the best Spanish-language poet born since 1970 by nearly 200 professors of Hispanic literature across the globe, Valverde has been widely published and widely praised. This bilingual edition of an award-winning collection brings Valverde’s brilliance into English for the first time, and the poems substantiate his reputation. The lyrics are, by turns, strikingly pithy (‘The wreckage of war drinks dawn’), profoundly reflective (‘I think sadness / is the land of man’), and suddenly surreal (‘melancholy fish are now October moons’). As progenitor of the poetry of uncertainty, Valverde seeks to ‘synthesize social concern and the deepest well of our existence,’ and his experiences reporting from the Balkans for the newspaper El País inform a number of poems. Figures like Bosnian historian Izet Sarajli and convicted Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladi, together with a town in Czech Republic, Kutná Hora, populate the poems. Valverde’s gift for plumbing the deepest wells of human emotion stays grounded in lived reality, true to his aesthetic. This is a long-awaited and enlightening addition to contemporary Spanish-language poetry in translation.”—Booklist
Valverde, one of the most accomplished young poets writing in Spanish today, grapples with the sorrow of aging, death, and lost love in language that both makes us feel the immediacy of pain and its transcendence through poetry.’—Anthony Geist, translator of Luis Hernández’s The School of Solitude: Collected Poems ‘The translations are faithful but also artful, attending to both literal meaning and the multi-layered figurative language that gives Valverde’s work its rich texture and depth. His landscapes correspond to inner states of mind, his earthly journeys to inward ones.’—Carolyn Forché, author of What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
Fernando Valverde is visiting distinguished professor in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the University of Virginia. He is the author of several books of poetry, including Eyes of the Pelican. Allen Josephs, University Research Professor in the Department of English at the University of West Florida, is the author of a dozen books, all related to Spain and Latin America. Laura Juliet Wood, poet and translator based in Pensacola, Florida, and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, is the author of All Hands Lost.
EL DAÑO Lo supimos después, sin tiempo para nada. Porque tal vez la vida nos dio todo al principio y seguimos buscando un camino que lleve a ese lugar, un puñado de polvo que guarde el equilibrio suficiente para no convertirse en aire o en montaña. Porque tal vez la vida no nos perteneció y se fue consumiendo como todas las cosas que hemos creído nuestras y son parte del daño que dibuja las líneas de la historia derribando ciudades con sus muros. Y de haberlo sabido habríamos juntado nuestras manos o mirado a otra parte. Y de haberlo sabido, habríamos mordido nuestros labios sangrando en el amor para dejar visibles las heridas, o habríamos rezado, o renunciado a todo para quedarnos quietos y no cruzar los días que agonizan. Es todo tan inmenso que no cabe en el llanto y el dolor nos observa desde fuera. Lo supimos después, no hay nostalgia más grande que aquella del futuro HARM We found out afterward, no time for anything. Because maybe life gave us everything at the start and we keep on searching for a road that leads to that place, a handful of dust with enough stability not to turn into air or a mountain. Because maybe life didn’t belong to us and went about consuming itself like all the things we thought were ours, and they are part of the harm that draws the lines of history knocking down cities and their walls. And had we found out we would have folded our hands or looked the other way. And had we found out we would have bitten our lips bleeding in the love in order to make the wounds visible, or we would have prayed, or given up everything to remain still and not suffer the agony of days to come. It’s all so immense it won’t fit into the lament and grief observes us from afar. We found out afterwards, there’s no nostalgia greater than that of the future.
Contents
Introduction 1 1. Crosses and Shadows 11 The Maid of Scarborough 13 Ratko Mladić Talks with Death 17 Walker on a Sea of Fog 23 Lament for the Dead 25 With Open Eyes You Walk through Death 29 Izet Sarajlić Crosses a Threshold Leading to Grief 37 Land of the Weak 41 2. Voyage of the World 43 Celia 45 The Edge of the Cliff 51 A Trail to You 53 Winter Postcard 55 Malá Strana Nocturne (Love Poem) 57 Daybreak 59 Daybreak 61 Yesterday 63 The Gambler 65 Abandoned Docks 67 3. Sadness in Maps 69 (San Salvador) 71 (Kutná Hora) 73 (Puebla) 75 (Potočari) 77 (Bogotá) 79 (Ruins of Toniná, Chiapas) 81 (Levizzano) 83 (Syntagma Square, Athens) 85 (San Cristóbal Beach) 87 (Field of Blackbirds) 91 (Agra) 93 4. The Light Will Not Arrive Alive Tomorrow 95 Harm 97 Memories Erased 101 The Fever Tree 105 Earthquake 109 Becoming Shadow 113 Journey 115 If the Sea Still Exists 117 The Weakness of the Light 119 Babel 123 Dedications 129
