Floating Lanterns

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Translated from the Spanish by Anna Deeny. "In FLOATING LANTERNS, her eighth poetry collection, Mercedes Roffe draws from a range of creation myths, sacred texts, philosophy and poetry that meditates upon human nature and our propensity for evil. She brings together Buddhism, Tibetan Yoga, the Judeo-ChristianBible, the Kabbalah, Plato's Republic, T. S. Eliot, Beat poets, the oral traditions of Medieval Spain, and Native North American cosmogonies. What binds these diverse materials is Roffe's use of anaphora. Through anaphora Roffe recalls the process of language building in the face of destruction. When catastrophes level cities, bodies and our loved ones, language too is leveled in our screams. However… poetic techniques can remind us of our subjective capacity to construct language again. They offer the possibility, or at least the hope, that a broken language, and from there the broken body, might also be remembered whole even if it is never to be recuperated."—Anna Deeny

Anna Deeny has translated poetry by Raul Zurita, Mercedes Roffe, Alejandra Pizarnik, Amanda Berenguer, Nicanor Parra, Gabriela Mistral, Idea Vilarino, Marosa di Giorgio and Malu Urriola. She is the editor and translator ofSky Below, a volume of selected works by Zurita, forthcoming from Northwestern University Press. She has a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University. Deeny is currently writing a book about sound, poetry, and translation.