 Fanaim(The one-eyed cat, 1984), 28 pages, bilingual, Edition limited to 100 copies. Exhausted. Translated into English by Chris Allen and the author. Nine poems.Sometimes I Call Myself Childhood Sometimes I Call Myself Childhood / A veces me llamo infancia (Solar, 1985), 26 pages, Translated by Chris Allen and the author. Twelve poems. The time is a woman who waits [Time is a Woman Who Waits] Ediciones Torremozas, 1986, 70 pages, ISBN 84-86072-42-5) Prologue by Juana Rosa Pita. Exhausted. Ediciones Torremozas, Madrid, Spain. From a review:”The Time is a woman who waits is a collection of poems that transcends discouragement. The lyricism of his verses emanates of the intensification of language, of its rhythm and cadence, of the word that permeates the text with signs, of the lucid word that ignites the image, of associations split into reflex forms that illuminate the passionate disorder, an intimate world poetically recreated. No There is no doubt that we are dealing with the work of a poet of great maturity who also possesses an extraordinary aesthetic sensitivity”.—(Maria Jesús Mayans Natal, Alba de América 10-11, 1988.) Autumn CelebrationThe The body of autumn is an animal on an unknown beach The body of autumn is a pair of wings that suffer the indifference of the wind The body of autumn is the rest of the castaway man alone within hope The body of autumn is my hands , very small daughters of time 34th Street and other poems (Eboli Poetry Series, 1987, 52 pages, ISBN 0-932-36708). In English. Prologue by Jack Foley. Cover Painting: “Lines Drawn” by Eugenia Tusquets. The book is divided into two parts: I. The Moviola has a Crude Sound System and II. Through the Keyhole of Memories. From Jack Foley’s preface:It is Carlota Caulfield’s extraordinary ability to remain in that precise state -at once separated and connected, exiled and ‘at home’- that gives her work its special poignancy and joy, its special power. The poems of 34th Street revolve with great richness around themes of memory, exile, love, childhood, dreams. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Carlota seems to have immediate access to another world, a world which she can enter ‘through the keyhole of memories’ or through ‘dream.’ From “You All Know the Story of the Two Lovers”:Today Eurydice played With the labyrinthine earth And imagined herself Bound to Orpheus’ skin. Imagined herself… Somewhere inside him. Today Orpheus played With his hands And imagined himself Playing a drum Somewhere inside Eurydice’s intermittent city. From “For my Father” You who lived walking over time. Majestic of skin and of soul. You Whom solitude made into a god. I remember your ancestral darkness, Dreaming dreams of what you never hoped for, The roads without final prayers, The accursed tranquillity which cut our wings. I saw you die. It was that morning When I begin to be nobody. Darkness divine Betania, 1987, 72 pages, ISBN 84-86662-08-7, $9 including shipping). Juana’s prologue Rosa Pita. Book design: Gregory P. Collins. Painting on the cover: “Le Double” by Leonor Fini. This book received the Honorable Mention in the Fourth International Poetry Contest “Mairena” of Puerto Rico in 1983. For this book, Caulfield received the Italian “Ultimo Novecento” prize, Poeti nel Mondo, in 1988. The book includes seventy-six poems dedicated to goddesses of universal mythology and a glossary that It features a brief portrait of each goddess. Poems reconcile haiku with “greguería”, other times they approach the reflection of the aphorism. From the prologue by Juana Rosa Pita: “Estamos ante una cartografía de las tinieblas donde Perséfone sostiene su decidida antorcha y Hécate esgrime la “llave maestra del Infierno”. Dadoras de vida y muerte, las ciudadanas de esta inusitada república de diosas aluden a un mundo que, como Ixtab, es “víctima del paraíso robado”, víctima de la inveterada manía de “talar la deleitable sombra/Del árbol cósmico”… Carlota Caulfield ha querido darles voz a deidades, algunas de las cuales son tan primitivas que no tienen boca, aunque sí dientes. No faltan diosas japonesas, esquimales y celtas en esta ecuménica fiesta de lo femenino primigenio.” “Shiko-Me”En la tierra de la muerte Una mueca agresiva Mi vasija de sake… Mis sandalias rotas Oscurità divina (Giardini Editori e Stampatori in Pisa, 1990, 68 pages, en italiano). Prologo di Juana Rosa Pita. Traduzione di Rosella Livoli e Carlos Vitale. Prólogo di Juana Rosa Pita. Traduzione di Rosella Livoli e Carlos Vitale. Copertina di Vittorio Minghetti. Por este libro, Caulfield recibió el premio italiano “Ultimo Novecento”, Poeti nel Mondo, en 1988.Neria De Giovanni escribe en la contraportada del libro: “Oscurità divina di Carlota Caulfield snocciola l’identità femminile così come è stata tramandata dalle religioni di tutti i Continenti della terra: c’è il mondo precolombiano con le divinità maya ed incas, la religione animistica degli Indiani d’America e degli Aborigeni della Melanesia e della Polinesia; la sapiente grazia orientale del Giappone e l’aggressiva vitalità dei popoli scandinavi. Ma non sono dimenticate le dee della Lapponia, degli Esquimesi, dell’India, dei Celti. Quasi una intera sezione della silloge è dedicata alla cultura greca ed alle immagini femminili dell’immaginario mitologico classico. Questa molteplecità è simbolo di poliforme pregnanza dell’essere, perché l’identità-entità femminile è una soltanto.Shiko-MeNella terra della morte Una smorfia aggressiva La mia tazzina di sake… I miei sandali rotti Angel Dust/Polvo de Angel/Polvere D’Angelo (Betania, 1990, 64 páginas). Edición en inglés/español/italiano. Poemas traducidos del inglés por Carol Maier. Poemas traducidos del italiano por Pietro Civitareale. Diseño del libro por Servando González basado en los dibujos a tinta del maestro zen japonés Sengai, Japón, siglo XVIII. Pintura de la portada: “Imprisoned Bag” de Daniel Serra-Badué. Miguel Angel Zapata escribe en la introducción a los poemas en español: “Polvo de Angel es el recuento de un transcurso sobre la mudez de la página, es al mismo tiempo el retrato de un hablante que se nos muestra volátil, girando entre un Ser-no Ser que inaugura una metamorfosis verbal: superposición de elementos afines a la personalidad lírica de la voz poética: motivaciones personales y culturales reseñan el rostro (del yo) y del otro espejo. (…) También en estos cantos, hay un re (verse) la propia imagen hasta el hartazgo: hay una troquelación del yo (hereje) que llega a esfumarse en la entrega. Nada es infinito en la página en blanco. Esta voz sabe lo que significa para una poeta modular los espacios.”La mente no es mas que un mono loco (Proverbio de la India) Anders Gezelius pintor sueco del siglo XIII tituló uno de sus autorretratos “Mi cara original, antes de que mis padres nacieran.” La expresión del artista está siempre comenzando a formarse en el lienzo. El cuadro es a cada momento un nuevo cuadro y nadie ha podido ver la misma cara dos veces. Acabo de ver la obra en Estocolmo, pero lo que en realidad he visto ha sido mi cara dentro de mí con mi mente de principiante. De Gezelius se dice que era un ángel. Estrofas de papel, barro y tinta (Barcelona: Cafè Central, 1995, 8 poemas, edición limitada)..Scusami, I walk alone La bandada de aves cruza el viento por encima del río (Inscripción egipcia) Entre la palabra y la música llevo mi rubor ceñido hasta los tobillos. Ojos, párpados, labios, uñas… vigilan la suerte de la quietud imposible. Busco purificaciones y a modo de tela me dejo ungir con gracia. A las puertas del papel con amoroso fuego (Torremozas, 1996, 64 páginas, ISBN 84-7839-171-1). Introducción de Marjorie Agosín. Este libro recibió la Mención de Honor en el Premio de Poesía Plural 1992 de la Ciudad de México, y la Mención de Honor del 1997 Premio Latino de Literatura-Poesía del Instituto de escritores latinoamericanos de New York.De la introducción de Marjorie Agosín: “Carlota Caulfield ha recreado y creado un conmovedor poemario donde la escena o el paisaje de la escena o el paisaje de la escritura, es en sí un gran poema, un bello acto de amor y de fe. Las cartas de esta colección son trozos de historias de otras historias y son más que nada, una conmovedora forma de acercarnos al sortilegio misterioso de las epístolas, que son como figuras mirándose a sí mismas y transformándose.(…) Es este un poemario exquisito y gozoso, una obra clásica en la poesía del siglo XX. Un poemario que ha sabido con delicadeza y dignidad rescatar las voces de la sensibilidad femenina en forma magistral y reveladora. Caulfield es una poeta para leer y recordar”.Exilios: Carta inédita de Nora. Mi exilio está tejido en la tierra de Kirche Flüntern desde 1951: soy católica y que más da que me llame Nora Barnacle si trabajo en el Finn’s Hotel de Leinster Street Dublín y Jim debía haberse dedicado al canto y no a la escritura porque la música hay qué diferencia esas páginas tan raras y los escritores qué gente qué gente en qué Planeta me muevo Jim si hubiera querido tener cartas eróticas ese verano que me sentí tan sola y tú las escribiste cuando lo necesitabas tú Trieste París o Zürich todas la misma cosa tan provincianas que no entienden el irlandés ni el español que hablo. Book of the XXXIX Steps / Libro de los XXXIX escalones (Luz Bilingual Publishing, 1997, 44 pages, ISBN 0-963-4009-5-9) Traducido por Angela McEwan. 1997 Luz en Arte y Literatura Translation Prize. Estos poemas están inspirados en pinturas de la artista surrealista española Remedios Varo. Otros temas : alquimia, misticismo, y Cábala. De este libro existe también una edición limitada de 39 ejemplares, numerados y firmados por la autora. Edición conjunta de Eboli Poetry Series y Rusconi, 1995. Español e Italiano. Traducción al italiano de Pietro Civitareale. Diseño del libro de Servando González y Plinio Gianfranco. IV En el universo de las notas la armonía se define en el peor dibujo del triángulo: soy Antonello da Messina, el de las trampas visuales. V Baúl abierto de las sustancias. Viaje en círculos de lo que creo es. Las pirámides, los rombos y los hexágonos se divierten con la flor: trazo lo oscuro y el poema se imagina luz. VI Emana la sombra de la forma y de la forma las desapariciones. Mientras más se mira menos se ve: la síntesis de todo y su opuesto es llama propia en el interior del baúl. At the Paper Gates with Burning Desire (Eboli Poetry, 2001, bilingüe español-inglés, 108 páginas, ISBN 0-9711391-2-1.) Traducido por Angela McEwan en colaboración con la autora. Introducción de Marjorie Agosín. This book received an Honorable Mention at the 1992 Premio Plural Poetry Award of Mexico City and the 1997 Latino Poetry Honorable Mention of the Institute of Latin American Writers of New York.”Carlota Caulfield gives us an extraordinary and hallucinatory book, original and disturbing, which helps us to recreate our madness and love as extraordinary women of a universal history, from countesses to dancers, from Incan princesses to nuns, because this poet knows that the true secret of love letters does not lie with the recipient, but with the writer. This is an exquisite and joyous collection, a classic work of 20th century poetry. Caulfield is a poet to read and remember: her love letters will forever be in the secret zones or in the open landscapes of the written word.” —Marjorie Agosin, author of Women of Smoke. “I read your incendiary women with immense pleasure, particularly enjoying the historical texturing of the material. My only regret was that I wanted more. I will read the collection one more time because I may want to respond with a poem of my own. You are inspiring me!” —Cecile Pineda, author of Face. “In At the Paper Gates with Burning Desire, Carlota Caulfield arranges a teasing collage of fragments of women’s writing throughout history and from all over the world. Her sources are various, ranging from Sappho to Isadora Duncan, from a Virgin of the Sun to Rosa Luxemburg; letters are repositioned, faxes and e-mails recontextualized. But a common theme winds its sinuous way through these shards of emotion ripped from the past: the secret, playful language of love.” —Stephen Hart, author of White Ink: Essays on Modern Feminine Fiction in Spain and Latin America. “In Caulfield’s poetry, writing herself becomes rewriting the other(s). There are two poetic voices in this book: an intimate female voice, strongly confessional, and an intellectual, cosmopolitan voice, full of multicultural references and endless metamorphoses, both of which transform our reading into a feast for the senses as well as for the mind.” —Jesús J. Barquet, author of Escrituras poéticas de una nación: Dulce María Loynaz, Juana Rosa Pita y Carlota Caulfield. Autorretrato en ojo ajeno (Betania, 2001, ISBN 84-8017-160-X, 72 pages).Carlota Caulfield nos invita a la poesía en su elocuente Autorretrato. Furioso y esencial tríptico doble a la búsqueda de las esencias, reflexiones, seres. Poemario que nos atrae con voz en grito, sin escondrijos, decididamente, al gran ritual de la poesía de Carlota Caulfield, poeta sobretodo de una generación sin generaciones. Y es que Caulfield se desnuda en su poesía sin miedos, sin irritaciones. Se deja derramar vocablo a vocablo con pasión de tinta sobre ese animal vivo de su poesía llameante. No hay paz, ni pausa, ni sosiego. Caulfield se abre en sensaciones “juego abierto” y en emociones que no son narrativas “no quiero contar historias” sino textuales en olores fuertes “conjunción de azahares”, colores “Con el color de tus ojos / El amanecer me ha sorprendido”, y sonidos “Toco mi filarmónica y digo: / Date ahora, mujer testaruda”. Así lo afirma su espléndido “La furia de los olores”:Sándalo en la memoria muerta del sándalo entre tu sed y mi sed (no hay) mirra, pachulí y gálbano. Perfumar, Sahumar, Aromar.Qué invitación a la poesía sensorial de Carlota Caulfield, la poeta de las diosas ocultas reencarnadas en la mujer de hoy (Oscuridad divina), la poeta de los olores y los sabores “Recetas y consejos para atraer sueños placenteros”, la poeta de los exilios y los viandantes (34th Street and other poems). Celebremos con ella en esta nueva copa.—Fernando Operé, University of Virginia. Movimientos metálicos para juguetes abandonados (Primer Premio hispanoamericano de poesía “Dulce María Loynaz”, 2002). Ed. Gobierno de Canarias / Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes, La Laguna-Tenerife, Islas Canarias, 2003. ISBN 84-7947-345-2. 47 páginas.”La Consejería de Educación, Cultura y Deportes del Gobierno de Canarias acaba de publicar un libro sorprendente ya desde su título mismo: Movimientos metálicos para juguetes abandonados, de la poeta cubana de origen irlandés Carlota Caulfield. Y no deja de ser curioso que haya aparecido en estas islas puente entre Europa y América, tratándose como se trata su autora de una poeta viajera, enlace ella misma de culturas de varios mundos, verdadera creadora de intertextos, de relaciones entre artes, literaturas y lenguas. En un libro anterior, Quincunce, Caulfield rendía culto a esa imagen de lo múltiple que se reúne en un centro, valiéndose de la metáfora de los cinco puntos del cuadrado, donde llevaba a cabo una intensa actualización de vivencias propias y ajenas convergentes en el corazón mismo de la búsqueda lingüística.” “Ahora Movimiento metálicos, premio Dulce María Loynaz, galardonado por un jurado entre cuyos miembros se encontraban Nancy Morejón (poeta cubana), Antonio Piedra (especialista en F. Pino), Eugenio Padorno (poeta canario) y Ramón Trujillo (lexicólogo), dando un paso más, se convierte en una cartografía poética que reúne las principales líneas escriturarias de Caulfield: pasión por el viaje y el viajero, en primer lugar, poética de las ciudades, culto a las artes, exaltación de la memoria, búsqueda de una mística, recreación de distintos paisajes (externos o internos) y sobre todo esa inmensa ‘actualización’ de tiempos y espacios, que viene a ser una de sus más propias ‘actitudes’ y ‘aptitudes’.”—Jaime D. Parra, Barcelona. The Book of Giulio Camillo / El Libro de Giulio Camillo / Il Libro di Giulio Camillo. Poetry. An Imprint of InteliBooks Publishers, 2003. 108 pages. ISBN 0-9711391.”The Book of Giulio Camillo is a sequence of haunting incantatory poems by Carlota Caulfield, beautifully translated by Mary G. Berg. Writing about loss and memory and the redemption that comes of confronting the wound, Caulfield summons up the inner life in the dream music of theinexpressible.” —Chana Bloch, author of The Past Keeps Changing In Classical times, Memory (Mnemosyne) was fabled to be the mother of the Muses. Frances A. Yates’ The Art of Memory traces the Platonic sources of Giulio Camillo’s 16th-century Theater of Memory in which “memory is not…one part of the art of rhetoric; memory…is the groundwork of the whole.” In these haunting, enigmatic, impeccably modern poems–the Seven Pillars not of Wisdom but of Memory–Memory functions as the key to Carlota Caulfield’s complex subjectivity. These three-lined, haiku-like poems resemble the frames of a film we do not quite remember but cannot forget. They usher us into a primal world in which “THE MIND’S TRACE / is defined in seeds filled with water;” in whichAIR, FIRE AND WATER are round creatures, a triad that can be anything.What Yates writes of Giordano Bruno is true here as well: El Libro de Giulio Camillo, like memory itself, is “a most profound discipline…an ‘inner writing’ of mysterious significance.”—Jack Foley, author of O Powerful Western Star, Poetry & Art in CaliforniaCarlota Caulfield’s project of reclamation of neglected, and sometimes not so neglected lives continues in her El Libro de Giulio Camillo / The Book of Giulio Camillo / Il Libro di Giulio Camillo. As her “Note in Homage” informs us, Camillo was one of the most famous men of the Italian Renaissance, renowned for the invention of a “theatre of memory” into which a single spectator would insert his head, to be presented with a view from the stage, as it were, of seven rows of spectators’seats. “It included,” Caulfield’s note continues, “all branches of knowledge and a method to memorize them as the ‘full wisdom of the universe’ was presented in ‘seven times seven doorways.'” This strange and haunting apparatus, sounding to us like a cross between a virtual reality headset and an image out of de Chirico, is translated into the medium of verse by Caulfield’s sevenfold sections of seven tercets which enact, rather than describe, Camillo’s theatre. In limpid and piercing verses, Caulfield (superbly served here by her translators, Mary G. Berg and Pietro Civitareale) moves her narrating voice – detached in the manner of Beckett or Borges – from an initial state of dessicated receptivity through the several senses and elements as defined by Renaissance cosmology. As ever in Caulfield’s work there is an insistence upon the body both as physical presence and as a mode of knowledge. It is marvelous, yet not an easy work, compelling the reader as it does to confront the theatre of his or her own memories, to “meditate with pure water from mouth to ear” until the memory of some other falls “like warm paper onto warm paper,” briefly escaping the prison of the self, of subjectivity, “and so the poem is written.”—John Goodby, author of Irish Poetry Since 1950. From Stillness into History. A Mapmaker’s Diary. Selected Poems. Bilingual edition. Buffalo, New York: White Pine Press, 2007. ISBN 978-1-893996-88-5. A Mapmaker’s Diary gathers a selection of poems from both published and unpublished work in a bilingual format by this verbal acrobat, juggler of words, and magician of memory. From the editor’s note:The poetry of Carlota Caulfield is characterized by journeys, by a wandering memory that seeks to travel all the world’s roads, to sail to all its islands. The speakers in her poems are voyagers in perpetual transit, symbols of that wandering creature that human beings inevitably turn into when they are exiles from paradise, that is to say, from their mother’s womb. The poet’s eye yearns to see everything, take possession of everything, with never a pause to draw a breath. An eye that perceives all, including the fleeting passage of time and space.—Isaac Goldemberg, author of Peruvian blues Carlota Caulfield has given us a work of great sensuality and rare luminosity, suffused with an intelligence that is both playful and meditative. Her pleasures and discoveries become ours; her tender, often sly observations are crafted for inheritance. But it is Caulfield’s devotion to the daily sacred that helps inspire our own.—Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban As they invent places and draw boundaries, Caulfield’s texts splice together a single imaginary map of over layered external and internal worlds. Restoring past phases of existence as she seeks herself, her poems can be cultural transmissions of profound resonance. On center stage is the multicultural space of the journey, location not only of encounters and epiphanies, but also of dramatic recollections of experiences of solitude and uprootedness, the emblematic site of the poet’s efforts, exile and wanderings. The creation of herself, which in Caulfield’s poetics is also defined as the singular adventure of self-portraiture in another’s eye, allows her not only to inhabit other gazes, and from these new perspectives to constitute herself through the other’s view, but to reach out to intrinsic otherness, with unsuspected aesthetic and existential implications. Carlota Caulfield’s poems are transpersonal and transcultural self-creation. The author interprets variations of the return to herself, recounting how her gaze is also present in the eyes of alterity. At the same time, and recurrently, she assumes the perspective of movement, of literal and symbolic —that is, figural— journeys. Memory makes these poems into gardens of forking paths, cracks of light that contain the figure of the author, surprised in the act of writing as she inscribes and translates her signs into the book of memory, now also a book that takes on a literal body in the world of life. Eye and word engage in an intense relationship. A result of this interaction is a metaphoric pronouncement of the writing that celebrates the creative power of the gaze and the word, and above all explores language. Because the visual eye is also the analytical eye that configures a vision into language, both the eye and the word indistinguishably constitute object and subject under permanent scrutiny. More than assertive, they are disruptive embodiments of the semiotic order in the symbolic. They open writing to meanings in whose center is found the fabulist nature of the poet registering the fluctuating forms of her dynamic self. Her world is conjectural, one of memory games in shifting art and of permutations. Caulfield’s texts operate by association and transformation, and model a reading that occurs in a zone of contacts, shifting sands and exchanges. Thus, we as readers can only reconfigure ourselves in transit.—Aimée G. Bolaños, author of Una lectura de poetas de la diáspora cubana(Fragments from “Carlota Caulfield, Poet in Transit” in A Mapmaker’s Diary. Selected Poems, 15-17) |
