Judah Rubin

The subterranean baroque of Roger Santiváñez

Judah Rubin
Photo of Roger Santiváñez by Mito Tumi, via Wikimedia Commons.

This portfolio brings together writing by Peruvian poet Roger Santiváñez’s beginning in the mid-1980s and into the early 1990s, or from his book Homenaje para iniciados to his 1991 book Symbol.

April 7, 2022

From 'Homenaje para iniciados'

Translated by Judah Rubin

Roger Santiváñez
Judah Rubin

From Homenaje para iniciados (Lima: Reyes en el Caos Editores, 1984)

Conversation with My Father in His Sick Bed

April 7, 2022

What war, huh?

Subjection in/as dissolution in Roger Santiváñez’s poetics, a translator’s note

Judah Rubin
Panel of winners of el Premio Libro de Poesía Breve, 2011. Image from Hipocampo Editores, via Wikimedia Commons.

By the time Roger Santiváñez published his chapbook Symbol, which is often thought of as marking a turn in his writing toward a neobaroque poetics post-1991, he had come to live in the United States, where he has resided since.

April 7, 2022

From 'El chico que se declaraba con la mirada'

Translated by Judah Rubin

Roger Santiváñez
Judah Rubin

From El chico que se declaraba con la mirada (Lima: Asalto Al Cielo, 1988)

3 

Ipa. Your mini-pool. The Theater. At the Santa Isabel roundabout, my black-haired head. Rock and roll. Between your thighs. Aquamarine pants and good little girl moccasins. Dreamer. Flyer. A strange taste for letters. Writing poems. One for tonight at 8. And boom there I am on the old sidewalks and swings and willows. Destroyed. Ana María Iparraguirre. Song that left off like wind at the airport. In the nothing of the next pages.

April 7, 2022

From 'Symbol'

Translated by Judah Rubin

Roger Santiváñez
Judah Rubin

From Symbol (Princeton, NJ: Asalto al Cielo/Editores, 1991)

Succumb

April 7, 2022

Poeisis: Kings in the Chaos

Translated by Judah Rubin

Roger Santiváñez
Judah Rubin

Poeisis: Kings in the Chaos
Hueso Húmero, no. 17 (December 1983) 
 

April 7, 2022

Uncollected poems (2019)

Translated by Judah Rubin

Roger Santiváñez
Judah Rubin

Havana Jetty 1985

April 7, 2022

The leftover letter is the missing one

Roger Santiváñez’s ‘Symbol,’ translated by Judah Rubin

Silvia Goldman
Judah Rubin
Rimac, Lima, Peru. Photo by Bruno Locatelli/CIFOR, via Flickr.

Translator’s note: Silvia Goldman’s essay was originally published as “Symbol de Roger Santiváñez: La letra que sobra es la letra que falta” in Góngora & Argot: Ensayos sobre la poesía de Roger Santiváñez, an anthology edited by Paul Guillén and published in July 2015 by Collages de aleWendorff. It has been edited lightly for publication in Jacket2 and appears here in translation for the first time. — Judah Rubin 

April 7, 2022

Political violence in ‘The War with Chile’

Translated by Judah Rubin

Luis Fernando Chueca
Judah Rubin
Mariano Mantel, “En el caos urbano,” Lima, Peru, via Flickr.

Translator’s note: Luis Fernando Chueca’s essay was originally published as “Violencia política, nación peruana y poesía en ‘La guerra con Chile’ de Roger Santiváñez” in Góngora & Argot: Ensayos sobre la poesía de Roger Santiváñez, an anthology edited by Paul Guillén and published in July 2015 by Collages de aleWendorff. It has been edited lightly for publication in Jacket2 and appears here in translation for the first time. — Judah Rubin

April 7, 2022

The language of the Kloaka

Language, civil war, memory, and drugs in Roger Santiváñez’s ‘Symbol,’ translated by Judah Rubin

Germán Labrador Méndez
Judah Rubin
Image of a pier in the Miraflores district of Lima by Paulo Guereta, via Wikimedia Commons.

Translator’s note: Germán Labrador Méndez’s essay was originally published as “La Lengua de la Kloaka: lenguaje, guerra civil, memoria y fármacos en Symbol (1991) de Roger Santiváñez.” Versions were published in Góngora & Argot: Ensayos sobre la poesía de Roger Santiváñez, an anthology edited by Paul Guillén and published in July 2015 by Collages de aleWendorff and in <

April 7, 2022
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