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Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems
A brilliantly translated bilingual edition of poems by one of Mexico's foremost woman poets.
Born in 1951 in Mexico City, Coral Bracho has published half a dozen books of poems including the groundbreaking El ser que va a morir (1982) which changed the course of Mexican poetry. Her exquisite long-lined poems evoke the sensual realm where logic is disbanded, wonder evoked. In the words of her translator Forrest Gander, "Her diction spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound....Bracho's poems make sense first as music, and music propels them."
From her early collections― Bajo el destello liguido and El ser ―to her most recent books La voluntad del ámbar and Ese espacio, ese jardin (which won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize), Firefly under the Tongue offers the first book of English translations by this most important and influential living poet.
Born in 1951 in Mexico City, Coral Bracho has published half a dozen books of poems including the groundbreaking El ser que va a morir (1982) which changed the course of Mexican poetry. Her exquisite long-lined poems evoke the sensual realm where logic is disbanded, wonder evoked. In the words of her translator Forrest Gander, "Her diction spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound....Bracho's poems make sense first as music, and music propels them."
From her early collections― Bajo el destello liguido and El ser ―to her most recent books La voluntad del ámbar and Ese espacio, ese jardin (which won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize), Firefly under the Tongue offers the first book of English translations by this most important and influential living poet.
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published April 15, 2008
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About the author
Coral Bracho
36 books41 followersBracho is winner of the Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. She received the 2004 Xavier Villaurrutia Award for her book, Ese Espacio, Ese Jardin. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (National Artists’ Center), and in 2007 she was awarded the award “Programa de Aliento a la Obra Literaria de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas” in recognition of her work.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 7, 2011
Two poems from Firefly Under the Tongue by Coral Bracho:
Butterfly
Like a spinning coin
threaded to the sun
the butterfly catching fire
at the sweet basil flower.
Stone in the Sand
The two play with a stone
that emanates light. They caress
its smoothness,
its specific weight on the white sand. They think about it,
cover it up. They turn it tactfully.
Without warning, one of them snatches it
and flings it off.
They both go looking for it.
That sweet unease
with which they see it again
makes them break into a sweat. They have to look for it again.
The one who throws it away
always welcomes it back
with thrilled exclamations. The other begins
to regard it
as if it ceased to exist.
Butterfly
Like a spinning coin
threaded to the sun
the butterfly catching fire
at the sweet basil flower.
Stone in the Sand
The two play with a stone
that emanates light. They caress
its smoothness,
its specific weight on the white sand. They think about it,
cover it up. They turn it tactfully.
Without warning, one of them snatches it
and flings it off.
They both go looking for it.
That sweet unease
with which they see it again
makes them break into a sweat. They have to look for it again.
The one who throws it away
always welcomes it back
with thrilled exclamations. The other begins
to regard it
as if it ceased to exist.
June 12, 2020
"The limitless inconstant/whiteness/of the wall. The few lines/that hold it together."-From this Light, p. 43
"consider the gestures . determing place and sequence. The sensation / of sequence; / consider the gesture that engenders / the sensation, ' the definitive body it outlines, / articulates;" -That Space, That Garden, I", p. 81
"...Something / you said then, / in that way, // in that way that always comes to pass;" -That Space, That Garden, II", p. 85
"Perception goes out, marking silhouettes, / footsteps go out, centering the vastness. / And night's shifting / profile goes on pulling one thing toward another." -That Space, That Garden, II", p. 89
"consider the gestures . determing place and sequence. The sensation / of sequence; / consider the gesture that engenders / the sensation, ' the definitive body it outlines, / articulates;" -That Space, That Garden, I", p. 81
"...Something / you said then, / in that way, // in that way that always comes to pass;" -That Space, That Garden, II", p. 85
"Perception goes out, marking silhouettes, / footsteps go out, centering the vastness. / And night's shifting / profile goes on pulling one thing toward another." -That Space, That Garden, II", p. 89
April 30, 2009
Strange and beautiful . . gorgeously written.
February 18, 2024
Very passionate and distinct. She writes in dense patterns of sound that are fleeting but evocative. Not so much sonorous as sensuous. I had to read slow and take breaks to absorb the thickness and lush intensity. This book covers multiple collections of her work.
Firefly Under the Tongue
I love you from the sharp tang of the fermentation;
in the blissful pulp. Newborn insects, blue.
In the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile.
Cry that distills the light:
through the fissures in fruit trees;
under mossy water clinging to the shadows. The
papillae, the grottos.
In herbaceous dyes, instilled. From the flustered touch.
Luster
oozing, bittersweet: of feracious pleasures,
of play splayed in pulses.
Hinge
(Wrapped in the night's aura, in violaceous clamor,
refined, the boy, with the softened root of his tongue
expectant, touches,
with that smooth, unsustainable, lubricity—sensitive lily
folding into the rocks
if it senses the stigma, the ardor of light—the substance, the arris
fine and vibrant—in its ecstatic petal, distended—[jewel
pulsing half-open; teats], the acid
juice bland [ice], the salt marsh,
the delicate sap [Kabbalah], the nectar
of the firefly.)
Firefly Under the Tongue
I love you from the sharp tang of the fermentation;
in the blissful pulp. Newborn insects, blue.
In the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile.
Cry that distills the light:
through the fissures in fruit trees;
under mossy water clinging to the shadows. The
papillae, the grottos.
In herbaceous dyes, instilled. From the flustered touch.
Luster
oozing, bittersweet: of feracious pleasures,
of play splayed in pulses.
Hinge
(Wrapped in the night's aura, in violaceous clamor,
refined, the boy, with the softened root of his tongue
expectant, touches,
with that smooth, unsustainable, lubricity—sensitive lily
folding into the rocks
if it senses the stigma, the ardor of light—the substance, the arris
fine and vibrant—in its ecstatic petal, distended—[jewel
pulsing half-open; teats], the acid
juice bland [ice], the salt marsh,
the delicate sap [Kabbalah], the nectar
of the firefly.)
September 4, 2020
Gorgeous poems and wonderful translations.
The eyes of a jaguar are leaves trembling in the wind.
Fire, the dazzling butterflies.
The eyes of a jaguar are leaves trembling in the wind.
Fire, the dazzling butterflies.
November 16, 2022
I am giving this book 4 stars only because of how wonderfully luxuriant some of Bracho's poems are. Mostly those in the collection "El ser que va a morir".
Otherwise, when she is not composing wonderful complex melodies, she writes ‘philosophical’ poems, which are about as dull and you can get.
Otherwise, when she is not composing wonderful complex melodies, she writes ‘philosophical’ poems, which are about as dull and you can get.
January 3, 2016
Beautiful on the ears. I love reading the Spanish and then the English out loud.
April 3, 2016
Some wonderfully passionate, burning imagery.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews