"An Anthology of Spanish-American Women Poets"

[spiralsheep]

Liz Henry has compiled and translated "an Anthology of Spanish-American Women Poets" (also available at the link as a .pdf):

"Toward an Anthology of Spanish-American Women Poets, 1880-1930 is an anthology of my translations from Spanish to English of 42 poems by 25 women from 11 countries in the Americas. Each poet in the anthology has a short biographical note with information about their work and about the poems I chose for the anthology."

I don't understand Spanish so, as with most translations I read, I have no idea how the translations map onto the original poems (although I tend to assume most translations which work as poems in their own right are more, and less, than literal equivalents). Nor, as these poems have been selected from a larger body of works, do I know how representative the repeated themes and apparent inter-poet conversations are of that wider corpus.

Vaso furtivo by María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira (1875-1924, Uruguay)

Por todo lo breve y frágil,
superficial, fugitivo,
por lo que no tiene bases,
argumentos ni principios;
por todo lo que es liviano,
veloz, mudable y finito;
por las volutas del humo,
por las rosas de los tirsos,
por la espuma de las olas
y las brumas del olvido . . .
por lo que les carga poco
a los pobres peregrinos
de esta trashumante tierra
grave y lunática, brindo
con palabras transitorias
y con vaporosos vinos
de burbuja centelleantes
en cristales quebradizos . . .

A quick drink by María Eugenia Vaz Ferreira (translated by Liz Henry)

To all that’s brief and fragile,
superficial, unstable,
To all that has no foundation,
logical argument or principles;
for everything imprudent,
quick, mutable, and finite;
to spirals of smoke,
to thyrsus-stemmed roses,
to foam on the waves
and forgetting’s sea-mist . . .
to all that’s nearly weightless
for the wandering folk
of this transient earth;
grave, moonmad, I drink to all that
with transitory words
and heady wines
sparkling with bubbles
in the most breakable glasses . . .