In Order to Talk with the Dead: Selected Poems of Jorge Teillier (Texas Pan American Series)

by Jorge Teillier, Carolyne Wright (Translator)

"In order to talk with the dead
you have to know how to
they are fearful
like the first steps of a child.
But if we are patient
one day they will answer us
with a poplar leaf trapped in a broken mirror,
with a flame that suddenly revives in the fireplace,
with a dark return of birds
before the glance of a girl
who waits motionless on the threshold." —from "In Order to Talk with the Dead" Reared in the rainy forests of Chile's "La Frontera" region which had nurtured Pablo Neruda a generation earlier, Jorge Teillier has become one of Chile's leading contemporary poets, whose work is widely read in Latin America and Europe along with the poetry of his well-known contemporaries Nicanor Parra and Enrique Lihn. This English-Spanish bilingual anthology now introduces English-speaking readers to Teillier, with a representative selection of his best work from all phases of his career. Carolyne Wright has translated poems from the volumes Muertes y maravillas (1971), Para un pueblo fantasma (1978), and Cartas para reinas de otras primaveras (1985). Avoiding the bravura effects of some of his contemporaries, Teillier writes from a life lived directly and simply, returning time and again in his poetry to the timeless and mythic South of his boyhood, the "Land of Nevermore."

Genres: Poetry

167 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1993

About the author

Nació en la ciudad de Lautaro el 24 de junio de 1935, el mismo día que murió Carlos Gardel. Estudió Historia y Geografía en la Universidad de Chile. Ejerció la docencia en el Liceo de Victoria. Perteneció al Grupo Trilce de la Universidad Austral de Valdivia. Fue director de la revista Orfeo y del Boletín de la Universidad de chile. Recibió los siguientes Premios: Gabriela Mistral, Municipal, Crav, Juegos Florales de la revista Paula, Premio Alerce de la SECH y el Premio Eduardo Anguita, concedido por la Editorial Universitaria al poeta vivo más importante de Chile y que no hubiese conseguido el Premio Nacional. También fue galardonado con el Premio Al Mejor Libro de Poesía 1993 establecido por el Consejo Nacional del Libro. Asimismo, ganó el Premio en Conmemoración del Sesquicentenario de la Bandera Nacional.

Reviews

[Shannon Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a really cool bookstore in Kansas last year, I came across a translation by Wright of Jorge Teillier's In Order to Talk with the Dead, and it's blowing my socks off. The poems are so impactful that I have been reading the book very, very slowly--one poem at a time--but I literally wept on the steps of an aquarium in San Francisco while reading this book last summer.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was translating some of Jorge Teillier's poems only to find that Carolyne Wright had beat me to it. These poems are clear, unassuming, nostalgic, and more than a little melancholy. Teillier is one of my favorite Latin American poets, worth reading in translation but especially in the original Spanish if you can. "Edad de oro / Golden Age" and "Bajo el cielo nacido tras la lluvia / Under the Sky Born after the Rain" stood out to me. I preferred Los trenes de la noche to this collection though.