Books published by Swan Isle Press

"New translations of poems by prominent Peruvian poet Carlos Germâan Belli. This selection of poems by internationally renowned Peruvian poet Carlos Germâan Belli tempers a dark, ironic vision of worldly injustice with the "red midnight sun" of hope. Belli's contemplative verses express faith in language, in bodily joy, and in artistic form. These thirty-five poems explore public and domestic spaces of confinement and freedom, from paralysis to the ease of a bird in its "azure cloister." Translations from the original Spanish by Karl Maurer retain Belli's original meter, follow his complex syntax, and meet the challenges of his poetic language, which ranges from colloquial Peruvian slang to the ironic use of seventeenth-century Spanish. This bilingual edition also includes notes and reflections on Belli and on the art of translation. Beyond introducing American readers to a major presence in world poetry, The Azure Cloister offers a fresh approach to the translation of contemporary verse in Spanish"--

Les Misrables and Victor Hugos Vision for Leading Lives of Conscience. A look at Victor Hugos masterpiece alongside reflections from famous actors, such as Hugh Jackman, who have had the opportunity to portray Jean Valjean.

"Emma Dante's passionate and brutal plays stem from a need to confront important familial and societal realities in contemporary southern Italy. Her twenty-first century tales challenge stereotypes of the country and stage acts of resistance against the social, political, and economic conditions of Sicily. The seven works in this anthology paint a complex image of the peninsula through stories of disenfranchisement, misogyny, deep-set bigotry, and religious hypocrisy that reveal economic disparities between the north and south of the country, oppressive gender relations, and deep rooted mafioso-like attitudes. Dante's lyrical and visceral storytelling oscillates between the humorous and the tragic aspects of everyday life, undertaking an irreverent subversion of the status quo with its extreme physicality and unsettling imagery. This exquisite first English translation of Emma Dante's work enables English-speaking readers, theatre scholars, and directors alike to encounter character-driven "civic theatre" with its portraits of individuals existing at the fringes of Italy. Ultimately, it allows us to "listen" to those who are not given a voice anywhere else. Close"--

Satan and his Daughter, the Angel Liberty, tells the story of Satan and his daughter, the angel created by God from a feather left behind following his banishment.

"Moving between the speech and silence of a woman struggling to speak freely, Ruth Behar embarks on a poetic voyage into her own vulnerability and the sacrifices of her exiled ancestors as she tries to understand love, loss, regret, and the things we keep and carry with us. Behar's vivid renderings of wilted gardens, crashing waves, and firefly-lit nights recall the imagery of her inspiration, Dulce Marâia Loynaz, who is often known as the Cuban Emily Dickinson. Presented in a beautiful bilingual English-Spanish edition--Behar serves as her own translator--Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardâe will haunt readers with the cries and whispers which illuminate the human spirit and the spectrum of emotions that make for a life and lives well-remembered"--

Elegant prose and imaginative ironies bring these compelling short stories to life in this first English-language collection from Mexican author Roberto Ransom. Each of the ten stories is filled with fascinating, yet enigmatic and sometimes elusive characters: an alligator in a bathtub, an invisible toad who appears only to a young boy, the beautiful redheaded daughter of a mushroom collector, a deceased journalist who communicates in code, and even Leonardo Da Vinci himself, meditating on The Last Supper. One of Mexico's most original writers, Ransom explores these characters' emotional depths as they move through their fantastical worlds that, while at times unfamiliar, offer brave and profound insights into our own. Missing Persons, Animals, and Artists is the follow-up to Ransom's highly acclaimed A Tale of Two Lions, praised by Ignacio Padilla as "the best Mexican literary work I have read in recent years. . . . [It] heralds a pen capable of that rarest of privileges in our letters: attaining the comic and profoundly human through a perfect simplicity." This collection of short stories has been translated with great care by Daniel Shapiro.

I only wanted to write about them, Narrate their fierce audacity, Their voyages through the channels of the Mediterranean. With that stanza, a poetic journey begins in search of presence and absence among islands in the Mediterranean that for millennia were homes and then refuge for Sephardic Jews after the Alhambra Decree, the Expulsion. Inspired by her own journey to the Greek Islands, to Salonika, Rhodes, Crete, the Balkans, Agosin searches for the remnants of Sepharad. In her poems, we hear the rhythm of waves, the wandering, a life of exile on distant shores. We hear voices of Sephardi women past and present with the occasional intonation of Ladino at times, embraced with modern Spanish. We hear it in the voices of her Paloma, Estrella, Luna, in the fullness of their lives, loves, dreams, faith, hope. It is an evocative and sensual voyage to communities now mostly lost after the Holocaust. "The White Islands" is a lyrical world recovered and tasted with language and song, lament and joy, custom and prayer, longing and hope. It is a Sepharad that remains alive, vibrant with beauty, and with each exquisite poem, a lighthouse of remembrance."

Composed of many layered scenes, unforgettable characters, snapshots, and vignettes, this collection of quick-witted poems and short fiction mixes deceit and conceit with moments of tenderness and the elusive nature of humanity, asking if identity is more than a festival of masks and self-invention.

Peruvian poet Luis Hernandez is legendary in his native country. Including images from Hernandez's notebooks, this book can be read not only for its powerful poetry and imagery, but also as a means to learn more about this enigmatic Latin American poet and the mystery of his life and work.

Explores poetry as vocation, obsession, and partnership between writer and reader, a 'road toward inner growth'. This book is suitable for poets young and old, writers, and readers seeking insights into the creative process and 'the way both poet and reader can find their own way to face solitude'.

Presents a biographical perspective on the tragic life of the poet and chemist Jorge Cuesta. Cuesta was one of the founders of Los Contemporaneos, an influential twentieth-century literary movement.

A meditation on love and its meanings in the land of Israel.

A collection of short stories that provides an intimate and critical view of Afro-Cuba. It confronts conflicts about identity, race, marginalization, and discrimination.

A collection of poems that invites readers to visit the darker and lighter sides of laughter and love and feel the tenderness of recovered memories as they cross the bridges of relationships and stroll down the mysterious streets of childhood.

Dieu pictures the imaginary search for God by a nameless protagonist, who must face the possibility of failure in this quest. La Fin de Satan, an indictment of prison, war, and capital punishment, depicts an attempt at reconciliation between good and evil. This book brings two of his lesser-known works deservedly to the forefront.

A collection of poems that temper the joy of existence - the "bounty that turns the author's flawed breath into prayer" - with a questioning of empirical reality. It includes poems of love and hate, contrition and forgiveness, and the joys of sorrow and existence.

In a series of aphorisms, this book brings together the elements of perfect work, both in writing and in other realms. A treasure for poets and writers, it includes helpful commentary by a noted translator and shows perfection to be a process of "becoming" rather than an end product. It also includes many aphorisms that were published in Spanish.

The volume chronicles how in their poetic skirmishes they sharpened and shaped each other's work - Garcia Lorca defending his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition while Dali argued for his theories of "Clarity" and "Holy Objectivity" and the unsettling logic of Surrealism.