Materia Prima
Materia Prima
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About the Book
Materia Prima is the first English-language collection of Amanda Berenguer’s poetry. A key contributor to Uruguay’s famed literary Generación del 45, Berenguer (1921-2010) stands among the most important post-World War II poets of Latin America, along with her now-legendary compatriot Marosa di Giorgio. Berenguer’s poetry, stylistically and conceptually varied, ranges from classic, measured lyric to Dickinson-inspired gnomic utterance; from metaphysical and erotic rhetorical effusion to condensed and radically concrete experiment; from seemingly apolitical languor to pointed ideological dissent.
The poems included in this edition span a large portion of Berenguer’s career and are taken from eight books, and an additional section dedicated to her visual poems.
This collection is edited by Kristin Dykstra and Kent Johnson, with translations by Gillian Brassil, Anna Deeny Morales, Mónica de la Torre, Kristin Dykstra, Kent Johnson, Urayoán Noel, Jeannine Marie Pitas, and Alex Verdolini.
The volume also includes an introduction by Roberto Echavarren and an interview conducted by Silvia Guerra.
A finalist for the 2020 Best Translated Book Award.
Author
Amanda Berenguer
Amanda Berenguer (1921–2010) was a vital presence in Uruguayan literary life for more than six decades. She is a key figure in the “Generation of 1945,” known around the world for its energetic experimentation. Her first book appeared in Montevideo in 1940, followed by a steady stream of collections recognized for their excellence. Awards for her contributions included, among many others, the prestigious international Casa de las Américas Prize for Poetry (1986) and two national Uruguayan prizes for her collection La dama de Elche. Berenguer’s lifelong dedication to the arts included work with little presses and radio programming, as well as collaborations with dancers and musicians. She is widely regarded, in her country and beyond, as one of Uruguay’s greatest poets.rn
Editors
Kristin Dykstra
Kristin Dykstra is the principal translator of Reina María Rodríguez The Winter Garden Photograph (UDP, 2019), and, with Kent Johnson, she is co-editor of Amanda Berenguer’s Materia Prima (UDP, 2018). She is the translator of Cubanology, a book of days by Omar Pérez (Station Hill Press), and Other Letters to Milena, a mixed-genre book by Reina María Rodríguez published by University of Alabama Press, which has also published her translations of Cuban authors Juan Carlos Flores, Angel Escobar, and Marcelo Morales. She is guest editor of a dossier dedicated to Flores (1962 – 2016) in The Chicago Review. The recipient of an NEA Literary Translation Fellowship, Dykstra won the inaugural Gulf Coast Prize for Literary Translation.
Kent Johnson
Kent Johnson is co-editor of Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Homage to the Pseudo Avant-Garde, a collection of poems, both published by Dispatches Editions. In 2015 UDP released a pamphlet of his annotated translation of Cesar Vallejo’s only known interview.
Contributors
Roberto Echavarren
Roberto Echavarren is an award-winning poet, novelist, essayist, playwright and translator from Uruguay. Among his many poetry collections are Centralasia, El expreso entre el sueño y la vigilia (The express between sleep and wakefulness) and Ruido de fondo (Background Noise). Echavarren is director of La Flauta Mágica publishing company, specializing in critical bilingual editions of poetry and the rescue of major poetic works written in Spanish.
Silvia Guerra
Silvia Guerra is one of the most influential figures in Uruguayan poetry today. She has published several books of poetry as well as a biography of Lautréamont. She lives in Maldonado and Montevideo, and co-directs, with Roberto Echavarren, the prominent literary press La flauta mágica.
Translators
Gillian Brassil
Gillian Brassil studied translation at Brown University and was the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship in Madrid in 2012. She lives in Brooklyn and works for a production company in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Anna Deeny Morales
Anna Deeny Morales is a translator, literary critic, and dramatist. She has translated works by Raúl Zurita, Mercedes Roffé, and Alejandra Pizarnik, among others. Deeny Morales received her doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches at Georgetown University.
Mónica de la Torre
Mónica de la Torre’s books include Repetition Nineteen (Nightboat) and The Happy End/All Welcome (UDP), as well as Public Domain, Talk Shows, as well as two books in Spanish, Acúfenos and Sociedad Anónima. She is the translator of Defense of the Idol (UDP) by Chilean modernist Omar Cáceres, and co-editor of Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry (Copper Canyon Press), and is a member of the editorial board of the Señal series at UDP. Born and raised in Mexico City, she has lived in New York City since the 1990s. She is a contributing editor to BOMB Magazine where she previously worked as a Senior Editor. She teaches poetry at Brooklyn College.
Urayoán Noel
Urayoán Noel is the author of 10 books, including Transversal (University of Arizona Press), a New York Public Library Book of the Year, and In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press), winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Prize. He is the translator of No Budu Please by Wingston González (UDP) and the editor and translator of Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poetry by Pablo de Rokha (Shearsman Books), a finalist for the National Translation Award. Noel also translated the concrete poems in Amanda Berenguer’s Materia Prima (UDP), which was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award. A translator for The Puerto Rican Literature Project (PLPR), Urayoán Noel teaches at New York University and at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas.
Jeannine Marie Pitas
Jeannine Marie Pitas is a writer, teacher, and Spanish-English literary translator currently living in Dubuque, Iowa, where she teaches at the University of Dubuque. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks and the translator of several Uruguayan poets. She has published translations of acclaimed Uruguayan writer Marosa di Giorgio’s work, The History of Violets (UDP) and I Remember Nightfall (UDP), and her own first full-length poetry collection, Things Seen and Unseen, is forthcoming from Quattro Books.
Alex Verdolini
Alex Verdolini lives and writes in New Haven, where he is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature. He translates from German, Spanish and French.
Praise
In the News
Excerpt
from “Avec les gemissements graves du Montevideen”, tr. Kristin Dykstra
I’m Amanda – from Montevideo –
daughter of Amanda, cow-eyed
contemporary deity
blackbird heart with lightning bolts
where the flash that shatters night comes to roost
it flaps joy inciting life
daughter of Rimmel, father
fighting cock
cruel Cerberus
or tender marrow under the feathers
almost bearings almost arrows
sister of Rimmel, sacrificed and dear
dead because the dead
from the kingdom of the dead
surrounded him
soy Amanda – montevideana –
hija de Amanda la de ojos de vaca
diosa contemporánea
corazón de mirlos con relámpagos
donde anida el rayo que quiebra la noche
aletea la alegría la vida conmovida
y de Rimmel padre
gallo de riña
violento cancerbero
o tierno migajón bajo las plumas
casi brújulas casi flechas
hermana de Rimmel el sacrificado y querido
muerto porque los muertos
del reino de los muertos
lo rodearon