No Shelter: The Selected Poems

by Pura López Colomé, Forrest Gander (Translator)

A Lannan Translation Selection

Beautifully translated by the award-winning American poet Forrest Gander, the work of highly esteemed Mexican poet Pura López-Colomé is, with this important volume, available in the US for the first time. Selected by Gander from throughout López-Colomé's five books in Spanish, these exceptional poems confront the confinements of fate, history, and misbegotten beliefs.

In forms that blur back and forth between poetry and prose, López-Colomé uses spare and honest language to describe the music of dreams, faith, and faithlessness; hers are poems of the soul resuscitated from the shackles of the body. As Gander notes in his Introduction: "[This] poetry is philosophical and exacting, pared into short, sharp lines, obsidian flakes." Indeed, the fierce intelligence and insistent moral and spiritual engagement of López-Colomé's poetry situate her among the most significant contemporary Mexican poets. No Shelter is a bilingual edition, with English translations appearing in the first half of the text and the Spanish originals in the second.

Genres: Poetry

102 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2002

About the author

Nació en la Ciudad de México el 6 de noviembre de 1952. Ensayista, poeta y traductora. Estudió el Doctorado en Lengua y Literatura Hispánicas e Hispanoamericanas en la FFyL de la UNAM. Traductora de Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, Ernest Mandel, William Carlos Williams y Philip Larkin. Ha colaborado para Casa del Tiempo, El Nacional, La Cultura en México, Revista de Bellas Artes, Revista Mexicana de Literatura, Revista Universidad de México, Sábado, Letras Libres y Nexos. Becaria del CME, 1982. Premio Nacional Alfonso Reyes de ensayo 1977 por Diálogo socrático en Alfonso Reyes. Premio Nacional de Traducción de Poesía 1992 por Isla de las estaciones, de Seamus Heaney. Premio Xavier Villaurrutia 2007 (con Elsa Cross) por Santo y seña. Premio Bellas Artes de Trayectoria Literaria Inés Arredondo 2019. Parte de su obra se encuentra en antologías como Asamblea de poetas jóvenes de México (Siglo XXI, 1980), Poetas de una generación : 1950–1959 (Premià/UNAM, 1988), Mujeres poetas de México : antología poética (1940-1965) (Atemporia, 2008), y Poesía soy yo : poetas en español del siglo XX (1886-1960) (Madrid, España, Visor, 2016), entre otras.

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no business reviewing this book because I've only read a couple of the poems. But I found the author in an old copy of VERSE--I found "The Cubs" then Googled her and read some things online. I love her natural tone that strikes a balance between narrative and abstraction. She sounds not the least bit pretentious, and something about the rhythm and language is incredibly soothing, even as she takes on disturbing content. And look here at these lines (from a poem called Fons): "I kissed you like a shipwreck / like one who insufflates the word." Nice. Usually I don't like poetry with heavy Christian imagery, but somehow she pulls it off beautifully. I did see a series in GREEN INTEGER REVIEW that I didn't like quite so much--those ones seem almost written by a different author (I'm not implying I think they are, I promise)...those are more...sentimental. Why? Maybe it's a translation thing, because I don't see any gratuitous sentimentality in the other poems.