- 144 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Night Journey
About This Book
One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won María Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino.
In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "medieval tabard" where a pelvis should be, a "lipless grin, " a "beach severed from the ocean." In one poem "nomadic cities" whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes.
Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "indomitable literary intelligence" subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "hidden splendor, " the "invisible center of the poem." As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.
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Table of contents
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Kidnapped by the Inexorable: Translator's Introduction
- Dedication
- Skeletons under the Sky
- Cage in Bloom
- Catastrophe
- Equestrienne and Officer
- The Marble Forests
- Loss
- Gabriel
- Heraldry
- Van Gogh
- The Great Watcher
- Mirror of the Soul
- Nomadic City
- The Father
- Dialogue with Gabriel I
- Lido
- The Visit
- The Telephone Book
- The Map of Time
- Napoleon II
- The Lovers
- The Eyes of God
- The White Horse
- The Baby
- The Three Madonnas
- Tout cherche tout
- Letter to Sèvres
- The Infinite Dictionary
- Windows on the Century
- Dialogue with Gabriel II
- The Two Heavens
- Fata Morgana
- New Jersey
- Rosamundi
- Crossroads
- Blindness
- Midgard
- Clothes
- The Deluge
- Sleeping Beauty
- The Journey
- Die Zeit
- Dialogue with Gabriel III
- Theory of Light
- Threads of Being
- Over Exposure
- Eternity
- The Bears
- The World Doesn’t End
- Fairytale
- Terra Incognita
- Epidural and Plunder
- Hieros gamos
- Dialogue with Gabriel IV
- Simurgh
- The Book of Being
- The Roof of the World
- The Anonymous Game
- Hurqãlyã, Peregrine City
- Autumn Skies
- Theory of a Good Death
- Cassandra
- Letter to Myself
- Esqueletos bajo el cielo
- La jaula en flor
- Catástrofe
- Ecuyère y militar
- Los bosques de mármol
- La pérdida
- Gabriel
- Heráldica
- Van Gogh
- The Great Watcher
- El espejo del alma
- La ciudad nómade
- El padre
- Diálogo con Gabriel I
- Lido
- La visita
- La guía telefónica
- El mapa del Tiempo
- Napoleón II
- Los amantes
- Los ojos de Dios
- El caballo blanco
- El bebé
- Las tres madonas
- Tout cherche tout
- Carta a Sèvres
- El diccionario infinito
- Las ventanas del siglo
- Diálogo con Gabriel II
- Los dos cielos
- Fata Morgana
- New Jersey
- Rosamundi
- Encrucijada
- La ceguera
- Midgard
- La ropa
- El diluvio
- Sleeping Beauty
- El viaje
- Die Zeit
- Diálogo con Gabriel III
- Teoría de la luz
- Los hilos del ser
- Over Exposure
- Eternidad
- Los osos
- El mundo no termina
- Cuento de hadas
- Terra Incognita
- Peridural y despojo
- Hieros gamos
- Diálogo con Gabriel IV
- Simurgh
- El libro de los seres
- El techo del mundo
- El juego sin nombre
- Hurqãlyã, ciudad peregrina
- Los cielos del otoño
- Teoría del buen morir
- Casandra
- Carta a mí misma