Along the sides of the Pan-American Highway kids read
weekly special
auctioned-offed martyrs
at the unstoppable pace
of new windshields
one by one fathers
fall
bizarre droplets
on the foreheads of cowboys
Monitored Properties
Florencia Castellano
Translated by Alexis Almeida
October 2016
poetry unafraid of error
Ernesto González Barnert
Claiming the mundane as its starting point — “a father takes his car out of the garage / and sings” — Monitored Properties interrogates the ideological forces that exist in the smallest moments of our lives. With playful irony, wit, and lyrical dynamism, Florencia Castellano takes on the figure of the “cowboy,” the gaucho that has permeated Argentine history and helped define patriarchy for centuries. In its re-imagining, the book questions the ritual of cultural inheritance, suggests that automatic responses can be broken down in language. Here, the literal and the absurd touch, the self and the other dance, “despite not knowing each other.” If no haven is safe from the language of patriarchy, then its reverse could be true: no language, however emblazoned, is beyond the reach of the poet. Monitored Properties is a testament to living, relational histories and the way they expose and resist official, state-sanctioned versions.
About the Author
Florencia Castellano (Buenos Aires, 1975) is the author of Un ruiseñor completamente blanco and Relieves de dispersión. She was part of the editorial group of the magazines Quesquesé (1997-2001) and Ilusiones perdidas (2001), and helped organize the Latin American Poetry Festival “Salida al mar” from 2007-2009. She edited the anthologies Quedar en lo cantado. Antología de poesía argentina y dominicana and Un libro oscuro. 106 poemas negros. Castellano teaches literature in high school and at the Universidad Di Tella in Buenos Aires.
About the Translator
Alexis Almeida is the author of I Have Never Been Able to Sing (Ugly Duckling Presse) and most recently the translator of Dalia Rosetti’s Dreams and Nightmares (Les Figues) and co-translator of Carlos Soto Román’s 11 (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023). Her poems, prose, translations, and interviews have recently appeared in FENCE, Oversound, BOMB, the Poetry Project Newsletter, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Bard Microcollege at the Brooklyn Public Library and edits 18 Owls Press.
In the News
Publication Details
ISBN: 978-1-937027-79-7
Chapbook
Saddle-Stitched. 40 pp, 5.25 x 8.25 in
Publication Date: October 01 2016
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)
Series: Señal #4