Theory of the Voice and Dream

This beautiful and meditative compilation of Argentine poet Ponce’s work presents ethereal scenes that seem self-contained in the poetic world (“The body exits and enters./ The horizon awaits the shock of the stones.// And kisses glide on the blood,/ from your lips, kisses”). Ponce, who began publishing in Spanish in the 1970s, writes in a patient, philosophical voice that roams widely between subjects, from a child learning language (“House as Kingdom”) to the tangle of eye, ear, and hand at play in a Chinese calligraphy workshop (“Fudekara”). As Ponce guides the reader through her experiment of “writing as an analogy—and not as expression: to construct another nature without morals, without biomes... at once empty of reference, empty of explications, isolated from ideas,” the mind’s intense presence in the world opens to radical possibilities, even as it ostensibly turns away from the raucous and politically charged Argentine poetry world that translator Shea capably outlines in his introduction. Readers will savor this. (May)