Materia Prima

Amanda Berenguer

Translated by Gillian Brassil, Anna Deeny Morales, Mónica de la Torre, Urayoán Noel, Jeannine Marie Pitas, Alex Verdolini

Edited by Kristin Dykstra, Kent Johnson

Roberto Echavarren, Contributor
Silvia Guerra, Contributor

POETRY, TRANSLATION  |  $22 $19.80

March 2019
Read an 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

urgent work, 'wingenious' and 'mythovulsive'

Pierre Joris

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.

About the Author

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

Praise

How fabulous to discover a major poet I knew nothing about! Is it that Uruguay is easily hidden behind the bigger Latin American countries, or that as a woman she is often disappeared behind the men? Amanda Berenguer, a major voice of the Uruguayan group of artists & thinkers known as the Generation of ’45, is finally getting her due in anglophone territory with the fine translations of this well-edited collection. Hers is urgent work, “wingenious” and “mythovulsive,” feisty yet lyrical, playful yet deeply serious, explorative yet assured. A great achievement.

Pierre Joris

We are lucky to get this anthology, which acquaints us extensively with Amanda Berenguer’s poetic cosmogony. It transports us to a planetarium where we float in ever-fluctuating cosmic landscapes. Berenguer’s constant "variants" of images, themes and graphics make me think of Emily Dickinson, while her vision has Blake’s vastness and exuberance. In her poetry, desire is so grand and ubiquitous that it is like a giant in a solitary cosmos. Even a blackbird has a "heart with lightning bolts" and / "The apple is brilliant / and dangerous: / one alone can set an orchard on fire." In "Of Cats and Birds" she writes, "When I meet a bird / I climb onto its wings without asking / and I fly among the heliotropes." I climb into Amanda Berenguer's pages and soar among cats, Möbius strips, quinces, blackbirds, The Magellanic Clouds.

Ewa Chrusciel

Across a long life Amanda Berenguer produced the most extraordinary poetry in a staggering variety of styles and forms. From complex longer poems like "Moebius Strip" to the exquisite grace of short poems fashioned with simple, richly evocative words, from concrete poems to such highly personal late masterpieces as "Leonardo Da Vinci and I" or "After Emily Dickinson," decade after decade Berenguer created highly original, unexpected poetry charged with surprise and intensity. Materia Prima is a beautifully balanced anthology that reveals the range and force of Berenguer's genius. An experimenter constantly finding new ways into the strangeness and exposed rawness of life, Berenguer's work goes on speaking in these powerful translations so carefully prepared by eight gifted translators. We owe them the greatest thanks.

Peter Boyle

Finally! A collection by the long overlooked “Amanda –from Montevideo–” in English. Materia Prima shows us the great range and depth of one of the quintessential voices of 20th century Spanish American poetry: from “light years of vertiginous / bliss” to “sea-sunset”, from “the scaly stomach / of the bottle” to “art with ass.” And the translations? These poems in their own right—showcasing some of the most talented translator-poets of our time—wash over us like an “intense wave of love.”

Katherine M. Hedeen

About the Translators

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 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’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 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 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 lives and writes in New Haven, where he is finishing a PhD in Comparative Literature. He translates from German, Spanish and French.

About the Editors

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 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.

About the Contributors

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 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.

In the News

Publication Details

ISBN: 978-1-946433-06-0
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 272 pp, 6 x 8.375 in
Publication Date: March 01 2019
Distribution: Asterism Books (US), Coach House Books via Publishers Group Canada (Canada), Inpress Books (UK)
Series: Lost Literature #24