Elsa Cross - Böcker

Beyond the Sea brings together two book-length sequences first published in Mexico in the early years of the century, both taking their origins from Greece, a matter of central importance for the poet for many years. Fittingly, for subject-matter thoroughly drenched in the Greek past, the poems are odes and dithyrambs, with the spirit of one sequence being Apollonian, while the other is Dionysian. The gods are there, and imagery that has echoed across the centuries is here transposed into a limpid modern Mexican poetry, composed with the lightest of touches. Here the Mayans of Bonampak meet the Minoans of Knossos, united across the centuries and thousands of miles by their preservation in wall-paintings, and by their observer. Here the gods meet our gaze, and come forth, raised from the ashes of history. They are not dead; they are not forgotten; they have merely been sleeping, only to be awoken by the poet. Elsa Cross is one of the most important living Mexican poets, and this fine translation by the Irish poet, Anamaria Crowe Serrano, does her work spectacular justice.

Amorgos Notebook (Cuaderno de Amorgos) is a collection from 2007 that won for Elsa Cross Mexico's most prestigious poetry prize, the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, especially valued by its recipients as the winner is chosen by her peers in the literary world. Elsa Cross' work over the past several decades has demonstrated a considerable fascination with Greece, and this sequence takes its departure from the island of Amorgos, in the Cyclades, home of remarkable ancient sculptures, and spectacular terrain.

The open mouth of the Orcus, in the front-cover photograph, represents an entrance to the underworld, according to all the symbolism embedded in the Gardens of Bomarzo, built in the 16th Century in central Italy. And this book actually seems to play with different strata of reality and perception, with different states of the mind - as well as the soul. It proceeds from the concrete to the oneiric; from the past, constantly weighting down the present, to the timeless moment that perhaps in the final poems gives meaning to - or annihilates - all the dense phantasmagoria that courses through its pages.

Elsa Cross (born 1946) is one of Mexico's most significant contemporary poets, and this is the first full-length collection of her work in English - a long overdue but welcome opportunity for Anglo-American readers to get a sense of the full breadth of her work. The work selected for this volume concentrates on her longer poems, which are at the core of Elsa Cross' work - ranging from the remarkable "Bacchantes", which dates from the late '70s and early '80s and offered here in full, through "Malabar Canto" - suffused with the spirit of India - to the odes, dithyrambs and elegies of the recent Greek-inflected works. Elsa Cross' work is typified by its strong metaphysical orientation, coupled with a dazzling surface and remarkable imagery, and offers the English-speaking reader a new experience. A poetry to be savoured, thanks to the efforts of the five translators at work here, all of whom worked closely with the author to bring these poems successfully across the language barrier.