poetry | E. Rowan Mena

Marcos Pérez Ramírez (PR Books #4)

February 2, 2011 by E. Rowan

Alejandría by Marcos Pérez Ramírez (Terranova, 2006). Marcos Pérez Ramírez is a young poet, journalist, and screenwriter. He wrote the script for the 2003 documentary “Vieques en el espejo de Pánama”, which won an Emmy (and can be seen here.) His poems have been published in journals, and he was one of the Puerto Rican poets included in the Antología de la Poesía del Siglo XXI ed. Julio Ortega (on Google books here). This is his first book. And that’s really […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Marcos Pérez Ramírez, poetry, Puerto Rico

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John Torres (PR Books #3)

February 1, 2011 by E. Rowan

Fiebre de Fresno by John Torres (Terranova Editores, 2009). Available here. John Torres (1977-) is a young, contemporary poet, therapist and professor. His first book, Fracturas del Devenir, was published by Isla Negra in 2006 (reviewed here). This is his second collection. What’s interesting is that with younger poets like John, they’re all over the web. The first poet in this series, though more established, had very limited web presence. Of course, with younger poets, it’s more or less the same stuff […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: John Torres, poetry, Puerto Rico

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Néstor Barreto (PR Books #2)

January 31, 2011 by E. Rowan

Sí by Néstor Barreto (Terranova, 2006). Néstor Barreto (1952—) is described on one of his online bios as a heuristic poet, a word I had to look up. It means experimentally inventive, something to do with trial and error more or less, and that seems to be a great description for this poet. He has five books of poems currently available (this is the latest) and one forthcoming from a series called Colleción Maravilla (book trailer here). He’s the founder of […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: experimental poetry, poetry, prose poetry, Puerto Rico

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José María Lima (PR Books #1)

January 28, 2011 by E. Rowan

Rendijas by José María Lima (Cuadernos La Torre, Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 2001). There is a preview available on Google books here. José María Lima (1936-2009) was a poet, mathematician, painter, Marxist, activist and professor. The bulk of his work remained unpublished until the end of his life, when the University of Puerto Rico commissioned the selection and publication in 2001 of this book , Rendijas [roughly Slits or Cracks or Gaps]. His first poems were published […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Clemente Soto Velez, Francisco Matos Paoli, José María Lima, poetry, Puerto Rico

Travel Report: Books from Puerto Rico

January 27, 2011 by E. Rowan

I just returned from several weeks of travel which took me to three major Latino Caribbean cities: New York, San Juan and Santo Domingo (in order of travel, not importance). Part of the trip was to visit family and introduce my husband to the tradition of the Tres Reyes Fiesta (kind of a big deal for my family in Puerto Rico). Part of the trip was funded by a generous grant from the University of Iowa Study Abroad Office to support my […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: poetry, Puerto Rico, travel

Subversive Poetry

January 20, 2011 by E. Rowan

So I’m not slacking in my book-a-day goal, though yes, I’m slacking on posting here. The book I finished a few days ago was Martín Espada’s The Lover of a Subversive is Also a Subversive. It was (as I expected it would be) extraordinary. Martín is, for anyone who doesn’t know, an incredibly prolific contemporary Puerto Rican poet who writes in English and teaches at UMass Amherst. He started his professional life as a lawyer, and in the first essay […]

Categories: Poetry, Reviews • Tags: Martín Espada, poetry, political poetry, Puerto Rico, reviews

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Reading the World #7 – Fady Joudah

January 13, 2011 by E. Rowan

The latest episode of Reading the World is finally up, you can listen on Three Percent or through ITunes. This episode of the Reading the World Podcast, with the wonderful Annie Janusch filling in for Chad Post, features Fady Joudah, Palestinian-American poet, physician, and translator. He won the Yale Younger Poets Competition in 2007 for his collection The Earth in the Attic (Yale) and was just awarded the 2010 PEN USA Literary Award for Translation for his rendition of Mahmoud […]

Categories: Podcasts • Tags: Fady Joudah, Mahmoud Darwish, podcast, poetry, Reading the World, Three Percent, translation

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Praises & Offenses

January 12, 2011 by E. Rowan

I finished reading this morning the anthology Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic. The poets are Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Angela Hernandez Nunez and Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo (those names are all missing their accents, because my little cheap portable pc sucks and won’t accept key-commands for accents). The translator is Judith Kerman, the publisher is Boa Editions, it came out in 2009. I started writing what I thought would be a brief summary of the book to put […]

Categories: Reviews, Translation • Tags: Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Angela Hernandez Nunez, BOA Editions, Dominican Republic, Judith Kerman, poetry, review, translation, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo

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Tres Ojos

January 10, 2011 by E. Rowan

Today I did not meet my goal. Today I was not as productive as I intended to be. Today, I went to Los Tres Ojos, an underground cave system in the east part of Santo Domingo. It was amazing. So though no excuse, it did take up the bulk of my day, plus by the time we got back to our neighborhood I was boiling in the heat and humidity. But I did get 1/2 of the way through Praises […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: Aida Cartagena Portalatin, Dominican Republic, Judith Kerman, poetry, review, translation

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Merwin

July 8, 2010 by E. Rowan

As I’ve mentioned, I’m in Corfu, and so somehow missed the news last week that W.S. Merwin is the new U.S. poet laureate. Merwin is almost solely responsible for the course my life has taken, and since I’m convinced I have few if any readers, I feel no qualms about sharing the story here. I’ve been trying to write a poem for him for years. Maybe someday I’ll get there, but for now, memoir it will be. At fifteen I had very […]

Categories: Uncategorized • Tags: poet laureate, poetry, translation, W.S. Merwin

E. Rowan Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

Tag: poetry

Marcos Pérez Ramírez (PR Books #4)

John Torres (PR Books #3)

Néstor Barreto (PR Books #2)

José María Lima (PR Books #1)

Travel Report: Books from Puerto Rico

Subversive Poetry

Reading the World #7 – Fady Joudah

Praises & Offenses

Tres Ojos

Merwin