The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out

Ana Enriqueta Teran is arguably Venezuela's finest poet. Celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, she is almost unknown among anglophones. Until now only a handful of her poems have been translated into English, giving at best a diluted impression of a uniquely intense imagination. This bilingual edition reveals the power and beauty of this poet's Spanish poems through English versions of corresponding force. It invites readers to enter Teran's world - a world at once strongly Venezuelan and universally human, imbued with great beauty, sardonic humour, pitiless compassion, lucid wisdom, and joyful affirmation. Selected from several volumes of Teran's work, these poems span half a century of composition and show a range in both form and substance. Some are written in closed forms, some in free verse. Some are carefully evocative representations of the landscapes and cityscapes that have nourished the poet's intelligence and imagination. Others are dramatic character studies. All are infused with Teran's rare sensibility and realized through language that manages to be at once graceful, urgent, and explosive.