Fayad Jamís, Katherine M. Hedeen (Trans.) & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez (Trans.)

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Biographical note:  Fayad Jamís (Ojocaliente, Mexico, 1930-Havana, 1988) is one of the most significant contemporary Cuban poets. He was also a notable visual artist, editor, and cultural journalist. Selections of his poems have been translated to more than twenty languages. Available for the first time in English, The Bridges is unanimously considered one of Cuban poetry’s most stunning and engaging books.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715220
ISBN:  9781844715220
Author:  Fayad Jamís
Title:  The Bridges
Series:  Earthworks
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  22-Jan-11
Extent:  172pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  6 mm
Weight:  258 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 9.99
Price:  USD 15.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  Available for the first time in English, The Bridges by Fayad Jamís (1930-1988) is unanimously considered one of Cuban poetry’s most stunning and engaging books. The collection, written in Paris in between 1956 and 1957, and published in Havana in 1962, offers a brilliant representation of the intellectual and his position before colonialism by one of the great Cuban artists of the twentieth century.

Main description:  Available for the first time in English, The Bridges by Fayad Jamís (1930-1988) is unanimously considered one of Cuban poetry’s most stunning and engaging books. The collection, written in Paris between 1956 and 1957, and published in Havana in 1962, offers one of the most brilliant representations of the intellectual and his position before colonialism to be found in Spanish-language poetry. Jamís constructs a subject excluded from modernity who, once aware of his subordinate condition, becomes an agent of decolonization. His main task is nothing less than a conquest of the power of representation. This poetic practice is carried out during a critical moment in modern history, shortly before the rise of national liberation movements that would bring formal political freedom to hundreds of colonies throughout the world. It is the result of an appropriation, the poet’s adaptation of the European avant-garde’s achievements to his own expressive needs. This is chiefly seen in the measured use of simultaneous images, which complements a remarkable plasticity, and coincides with the author also being a painter. In short, under The Bridges flows a poetry that is decolonizing in its content and decolonized in its form, by one of the great Cuban artists of the twentieth century.

Table of contents:
The Bridges (toward Decolonization) of Fayad Jamís
Wind’s Beer / La cerveza del viento
La cerveza del viento
Wind’s Beer
Relaciones
Relations
Instantes
Instants
Palabras
Words
Mañana
Tomorrow
Vagabundo del alba
Dawn Drifter
Cucu
Cuckoo
Por una bufanda perdida
For a Lost Scarf
Noche sencillamente
Night Simply
La silla
The Chair
Cuando
When
Nada
Nothing
Esta mañana
This Morning
El recibo
The Receipt
Algo
Something
No conozco
I Do Not Know
Ahora
Now
Sobre un verso de Esenin
On a Verse by Esenin
Historia de ceniza
History of Ash
En el vidrio
In the Glass
Cuento árabe para Mariannik
Arabian Tale for Mariannik
Cielo de arena
Sand Sky
6 P. M.
6 p.m.
Aquel que no había dormido
The Man who Hadn’t Slept
Charlot y la luna
The Tramp and the Moon
Sky’s Misery / La miseria del cielo
El ángelus del alba
Dawn Angelus
Sin perchero
Without a Clothes Hanger
El que va hablando solo
The Man who Goes Around Talking to Himself
22 rue Delambre
22 Rue Delambre
La miseria del cielo
Sky’s Misery
Noticias (i)
News (i)
Noticias (ii)
News (ii)
El zumbido
The Buzz
Las raíces
Roots
Nieve (i)
Snow (i)
Nieve (ii)
Snow (ii)
Las flechas
Arrows
Hielo
Ice
Outside the Law / Fuera de la ley
En un barquito de papel
In a Tiny Paper Boat
La rue Guillaume Apollinaire
La Rue Guillaume Apollinaire
A la orilla del río
At the Riverside
Octubre
October
La Vía Láctea cae
The Milky Way Falls
Reloj de agua
Water Clock
El ahorcado del Café Bonaparte
Café Bonaparte’s Hanged Man
Lamento del joven soldado Jean-Pierre Lepetit
en los desiertos de Argelia
Lament of the Young Soldier Jean-Pierre LePetit
in the Algerian Deserts
Lentitud del domingo
Sunday Slowness
La antigua luz
The Ancient Light
Reunión
Meeting
El hombre que tose y estornuda
The Man who Coughs and Sneezes
Sucesos callejeros
Street Happenings
Canción del verdugo
Executioner’s Song
El sol va a caer
The Sun Will Set
Magia del verano
Summer Magic

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Excerpt from book:  

Instantes

Nadie podrá decir
exactamente
cómo estaban las cosas alrededor de la lámpara
este día de ceniza de rubí
El reloj aturdido el vaso de agua
su rostro como una mañana de llovizna y de sol

Orden único de las cosas
Sueños sin reverso
instantes de cristal
de fuego
de eternidad
cuando el amor cierra las alas
como una paloma oscura

Instants

No one can say
exactly
how things were around the lamp
this day of ash of ruby
The bewildered clock the glass of water
her face like a morning of drizzle and sun

Sole order of things
Dreams without reverse
instants of glass
of fire
of eternity
when love closes its wings
like a dark dove

Unpublished endorsement:  One of our generation’s and one of Latin America’s most essential poets.

Roberto Fernández Retamar, author of Caliban and Other Essays

Unpublished endorsement:  Fayad Jamís’s work preserves an affinity with what is human and a preoccupation for what is beyond intimacy; both are truly exemplary.

Roque Dalton, author of Small Hours of the Night