By Mariana Spada
Translated by Robin Myers
Featuring a preface by Esther Allen
The Law of Conservation is a poetry collection intensely attuned to landscape, both geographic and metaphorical.
Publication Date: August 22, 2023
Paperback: 9781646052226
eBook: 9781646052486
Description
Borders blurred as cities cede to rural land; the body as a changing place on an equally unstable map; the subsoil of sexuality; the terrain of memory, both rich and painful; new countries traveled and new roots set down as an adult, navigating desire, loneliness, and love.
In the context of gender and sexual identity, Spada’s work pays subtle, incisive attention to the inextricable relationship between transformation and conservation: transformation toward the experience of honoring and protecting our deepest and most abiding truths. At the same time, her poems also unsparingly explore the external shifts (in the speaker’s surroundings and even her memories) that make it so challenging to retain an unassailable sense of self.
Biographical Note
Mariana Spada was born in Entre Ríos, Argentina, in 1979. She studied Literature in Santa Fe, Argentina, and lived in Buenos Aires for about a decade before moving to Barcelona, Spain, where she currently resides. The Law of Conservation is her first book.
Robin Myers is a Mexico City-based poet and Spanish-to-English translator. Robin’s poetry has been selected for the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology and appears in journals such as the Yale Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, Annulet Poetry Journal, and Massachusetts Review, among others. Her collections have been published as bilingual English-Spanish editions in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain.
Reviews
"Mariana Spada's eye—always taking in surprising scenes from unforeseeable angles—sees crystal clear in the English of Robin Myers, who is quickly becoming one of the great poet-translators of her generation." —Kit Schluter, author of Pierrot's Fingernails
"Argentine poet Mariana Spada's debut collection, which originally appeared in Spanish, situates speakers in verdant surroundings, brightly evocative of sultry summer afternoons... Robin Myers's English translations are acoustically rich." —Diego Báez, Poetry Foundation