prepoems in postspanish and other poems

Author: Jorgenrique Adoum

Translators: Katherine M. Hedeen and Victor Rodríguez Núñez

Publisher: Black Square Editions (2021)

prepoems in postspanish and other poems marks the first full-length collection to appear in English by the groundbreaking Ecuadorian poet Jorgenrique Adoum (1926-2009), hailed by Nobel-prize winner Pablo Neruda as the best Latin American poet of his generation. Adoum's poetry is at once radically experimental, fiercely lyrical, and passionately committed to social change. This timely volume showcases Adoum at his most formally innovative, gathering together three books published between 1973 and 1993: Curriculum Mortis, prepoems in postspanish, and Love Disinterred. Translators Katherine M. Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez's inventive and expert renderings bring Adoum's experimentation to the fore.

"The best Latin American poet of his generation."

–Pablo Neruda

"For the rest of my life, I will be grateful to these translators! Jorgenrique Adoum has an extraordinary landscape for us to meet, explore 'in the subsoul or the dislife' and to know poets, poetry, as new all over again. The strength of poetry has never been more evident!"

–CA Conrad

"These electric poems burn and mourn, seduce and jeer. They bend language and lore; they strain against state repression. They painstakingly document the 'cottony calm' and the turtle's 'historical sadness,' in a translation that attends expertly to the poems' ecstatic coinages and revolutionary energy. It's an awesome book."

–Natalie Shapero