Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems

by Juan Gelman

Book Overview

Juan Gelman is Argentina's leading poet, but his work has been almost unknown in the United States until now. In 2000, he received the Juan Rulfo Award, one most important literary awards in the Spanish-speaking world, and in 2007, he received the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish-speaking world's top literary prize. With this selection, chosen and superbly translated by Joan Lindgren, Gelman's lush and visceral poetry comes alive for an English-speaking readership.

Gelman is a stark witness to the brutality of power, and his poems reflect his suffering at the hands of the Argentine military government (his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchild were "disappeared"). While political idealism infuses his writing, he is not a servant of ideology. Themes of family, exile, the tango, Argentina, and Gelman's Jewish heritage resonate throughout his poems, works that celebrate life while confronting heartache and loss.

"remembering their little bones when it rains/ the compa erosstomp on darkness/set forth from death/wander the tender night/I hear their voices like living faces"--from Remembering Their Little Bones

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520205871
• ISBN13: 9780520205871
• Release Date: March 1997
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A testament of love, loss, and exile

"Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems" is an important volume by Juan Gelman of Argentina. This collection has been edited and translated into English by Joan Lindgren, and features a foreword by Eduardo Galeano.Gelman spent time in exile during a period of Argentine military dictatorship; his son and daughter-in-law disappeared under the dictatorship. Much of this book deals with these painful realities. The book includes a helpful chronology of the Argentine turmoil from 1966-95. Unfortunately, this is an English-only edition; I would have preferred a bilingual edition.Many of Gelman's poems are dark and mournful. This is understandable, since many of them deal with such subjects as exile, torture, and assassination. There are also poems about love, and about poetry itself. I was especially moved by his series of prose poems that explore the psychological landscape of the exile. He writes, "I am a monstrous plant. My roots are thousands of miles from me and no stem connects us" (from "Under Foreign Rain" XVI).This is a haunting and powerful volume. I highly recommend this book to those interested in Latin American poetry, literature of exile, and human rights.

A gem even in translation

Even in translation (although I wish this were a dual language book) a very distinctive use of repetition and very tight construction shines through. I would call the work less "political poetry" than "poetry of human relationships that have a political context". Even poems of anguish regarding the Argentine "disappeared", have a universality rather than a stridentcy. The poems include exquisite turns of phrase that make reading it a pleasure of waiting for the next magnificant phrase.