Nelson Villalobos

Recitations

Cuba's Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas.  Photo from Nelson Villalobos.
Cuba's Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. Photo from Nelson Villalobos.

Where do you draw boundaries between a translator’s research and the collecting of stories about the poet?   Stories expand on the truth while distorting the truth.  Hearing them is an inevitable part of the translation process — or at least it has been for me, because I have translated materials over time from a series of writers with links to the same city, which means that my interpretations are partially influenced by the city's shifting artistic community.

Quick now

Villalobo & Escobar, San Miguel del Padrón, 1987. Photo by Eva Leal Lavandera.
Villalobo & Escobar, San Miguel del Padrón, 1987. Photo by Eva Leal Lavandera.

Angel Escobar’s awareness of motion is one of the many elements that make his poems undeniably powerful.  To me, as I translate his poems, there is no doubt that Escobar (1957-1997) created multivalent, energetic work, and that a quick reading of one or two poems at least hints at his range. Other writers, at the very least other poets, must recognize the surety of his movements. 

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