Description:
The Land of Mild Light has assembled Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas' most important poems in vivid translation by the world's finest poets and translators, including Robert Pinsky, Forrest Gander, Sophie Cabot Black and more.
Brief description: Rafael Cadenas (Barquisimeto, 1930) is a Venezuelan poet, translator, and educator. He formed part of the "Tabla Redonda" group in the early sixties, when he was active in the Communist Party of Venezuela. He was imprisoned and exiled during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and he took refuge on the island of Trinidad until 1957. He has published the books Los cuadernos del destierro (1960), Falsas maniobras (1966), Memorial (1977), Intemperie (1977), Anotaciones (1983), Amante (1983), Dichos (1992), Gestiones (1992), Apuntes sobre San Juan de la Cruz y la mística (1995), and En torno a Basho y otros asuntos (2016). He received a Guggenheim grant in 1986 and an Honoris Causa doctorate from the Central University of Venezuela. His work has been awarded several important prizes, including the Premio Nacional de Ensayo in 1984, the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 1985, the Premio San Juan de la Cruz in 1991, the Premio Internacional de Poesía Ciudad de Granada Federico García Lorca in 2016, and the Reina Sofia Iberoamerican poetry prize in 2018.
Review Quotes: Our poetry is vastly enlarged by voices from Latin America. The Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas has always worked at the nexus between spiritual and political life, and in this marvelous collection he gives us "a song so loving it can never vanish."
- Edward Hirsch
Rafael Cadenas' stirring poems, brought to us here in English by an array of translators, remind us of the scope, mystery and power of great poetry. They are both cosmic and erotic - attuned to the tremors of the body of the beloved as well as the rhythms of our cherished earth. He proposes a beautiful sort of physics of memory, unconfinable by time, exile, borders and boundaries. We need these kinds of visionaries.
- Amy Gerstler