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The Poetry of Sara Pujol Russell.
By Sara Pujol Russel. Neol Valis, tr. & intro.
Susquehanna University Press (Associated University Presses, distr). 2005. 123 page. $34.50, ISBN 1-57591-099-3
THE SELECTION OF POEMS by the contemporary Catalan poet Sara Pujol Russell was translated into English by Noel Valis, a scholar known for her contributions to modern Spanish literary and cultural studies, including her recent, award-winning volume The Culture of Cursilerla: Bad Taste, Kitsch and Class in Modern Spain. For this bilingual anthology, Valis selected poems from Pujol Russell's books in Spanish, El fuego tiende su aire (1999) and In facto asombro en lii luz del silencio / El silencio del loto, Ia luz de las rosas (2001), and some of these poems were originally written in Catalan. In addition, there are five selections from the poet's most recent work, Para decir sí a La carencia, si a la naranja, al azafran en el pan (2004). The purpose of this anthology is to introduce Pujol Russell's unique poetry to English-speaking readers-it has been translated to French, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Chinese, and Italian.
Pujol Russell's "highly conceptualized, metaphysical" verse has been called a poetry of contemplation by Biruté Ciplijauskaite. It is intimate yet strange, humorous, and perplexing; it is ambiguous and subversive in its self-referentiality. Valis notes one characteristic of this poetry is that it "attempts to erase.or alter, the fundamental distinction between language and the real, or being." As a consequence, in Pujol Russell's poetic world even the reader's usual point of reference-the poetic voice or the "I" that speaks-is unstable: "I begin where the word begins," writes the poet, underscoring the complexity and the unnaturali.zed relationship between the self, the word, and the world. However, there is a world behind these seemingly disconnected signs, for Pujol Russell's imagery is highly traditional even if the poet's use of language is not; and the self, its relation to the world, and its relation to others are characteristic legacies of romanticism. Indeed, this is verse that contemplates life through the word, that mediates life, thought, sensations, emotions, and desires through the creative use of language, wresting abstract concepts into intimate vivencias. Of the abstract word, Pujol Russell writes:"I know the world through you and through you T live it. / I live when you give me life, I am saved when you save me." This is poetry that celebrates, at times, the fullness of the moment, of being one with one's place in a given point in time, recalling the early poetry of Jorge Guillen that proclaims a joie de vivre in the seemingly inconsequential. Pujol Russell's verse also rehearses life's heartfelt losses.
For the bilingual reader, poetry in translation frequently seems an odd coupling of the foreign with the familiar; however, Pujol Russell's poetry, written in long lines of free verse with frequent enjambment, appears paragraph like on the page; and since rhyme and meter are not elements of the original verse, the translation into English works well. Noel Valis has provided a compelling introduction with an essential selected bibliography, and this first anthology of Sara Pujol Russell's poetry in English should be obligatory reading for anyone interested in original and intriguing new poetry from Spain.
Pujol Russell's "highly conceptualized, metaphysical" verse has been called a poetry of contemplation by Biruté Ciplijauskaite. It is intimate yet strange, humorous, and perplexing; it is ambiguous and subversive in its self-referentiality. Valis notes one characteristic of this poetry is that it "attempts to erase.or alter, the fundamental distinction between language and the real, or being." As a consequence, in Pujol Russell's poetic world even the reader's usual point of reference-the poetic voice or the "I" that speaks-is unstable: "I begin where the word begins," writes the poet, underscoring the complexity and the unnaturali.zed relationship between the self, the word, and the world. However, there is a world behind these seemingly disconnected signs, for Pujol Russell's imagery is highly traditional even if the poet's use of language is not; and the self, its relation to the world, and its relation to others are characteristic legacies of romanticism. Indeed, this is verse that contemplates life through the word, that mediates life, thought, sensations, emotions, and desires through the creative use of language, wresting abstract concepts into intimate vivencias. Of the abstract word, Pujol Russell writes:"I know the world through you and through you T live it. / I live when you give me life, I am saved when you save me." This is poetry that celebrates, at times, the fullness of the moment, of being one with one's place in a given point in time, recalling the early poetry of Jorge Guillen that proclaims a joie de vivre in the seemingly inconsequential. Pujol Russell's verse also rehearses life's heartfelt losses.
For the bilingual reader, poetry in translation frequently seems an odd coupling of the foreign with the familiar; however, Pujol Russell's poetry, written in long lines of free verse with frequent enjambment, appears paragraph like on the page; and since rhyme and meter are not elements of the original verse, the translation into English works well. Noel Valis has provided a compelling introduction with an essential selected bibliography, and this first anthology of Sara Pujol Russell's poetry in English should be obligatory reading for anyone interested in original and intriguing new poetry from Spain.
Bruce A. Boggs, University of Oklahoma<Top>
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