Ensayo General: Poesia Reunida 1964-2014

Ensayo general. Poesía reunida 1964-2014, the collected poems of Raúl Bueno, has been recently published by Hipocampo Editores (Lima, 2015) under the auspices of the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Dartmouth College. It includes five books already published (amongst them Misivas de la Nueva Albión –Letters from New England, 2014) and three previously unpublished collections. It also includes a Prologue by Prof. Beatriz Pastor (“Raúl Bueno… captures with exact lyricism the seasons’ rhythms, the early spring thaw, the shadow of the forests, the meadow’s murmur…”), an afterword by poet Roger Santiváñez (“exile is the subject that commands these poems”), and notes by Rocío Ferreira (“the rootlessness of the migrant subject”) and Antonio Gómez (“profoundly lyrical”). The late NY poet Eva Oppenheim praised the “wonderful imagery and detail” of the 2014 book. The volume is going to be presented and discussed in Havana, Cuba, on July 9, 2015.

Here is a fragment: of “Duendes de Acá y de Allá” [Goblins Past and Present]: Cayó un lluvia breve, ha corrido la brisa./ El verano se ha acobardado un poco a esta hora/ cerca ya de la noche.// Los vecinos –gente buena en su religión/ austera en sus costumbres–/ han salido a llenarse de aire nuevo, darle camino al perro/ y exhalar las posibles culpas del día. [“A shower has come and gone; gust of a breeze,/ Summer has tired a bit at this hour, near now to nighttime.// The neighbors – good people in their religion, austere in their habits –/ have gone out to get their fill of new air, to give their dog her walk/ and to exhale any of today’s potential guilt.” –translated by Elizabeth Polli]