Full Description
Shortlisted for the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation 2024.
Shortlisted for the Premio Valle Inclán Prize 2023.
Mexican
poet, teacher and translator Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in
1951. She has published several books, two in English thanks to the
brilliant poet-translator Forrest Gander, who has put this composite
volume together, the first time Bracho has been extensively published in
the UK.
An extensive selection from Bracho's earlier work, which
'altered the landscape of Mexican poetry' (World Literature Today), is
accompanied by the entirety of her new book, of which Gander writes:
'Although composed of individual poems, It Must Be a Misunderstanding
is really a deeply affecting book-length work whose force builds as the
poems cycle through their sequences. The "plot" follows a general
trajectory—from early to late Alzheimer's—with non-judgmental affection
and compassionate watchfulness. We come to know an opinionated,
demonstrative elderly woman whose resilience, in the face of her
dehiscent memory, becomes most clear in her adaptive strategies. The
poems involve us in the mind's bafflement and wonder, in its creative
quick-change adjustments, and in the emotional drama that draws us
across the widening linguistic gaps that reroute communication.
Bracho's
poems have philosophical and psychological underpinnings even when they
are descriptive. Her work has always managed to mix abstraction and
sensuality, but in this book the two merge into a particularly resonant
combination. 'We are inside a mind, maybe many minds, considering a
mystery with signal attentiveness, openness, and love.'
