Mouth of Hell
by Maria Negroni
Translated by Michelle Gil-Montero
Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Bilingual Edition.
ISBN: 9780983148098
15 April 2013
$16
The forest dark as ever, without latitudes. An aide-de-camp to say something about nothing and guide us up the river of blood.
María Negroni’s novel-in-verse presents a journey to a terrible yet somehow perfect Hell, poised on that margin where selfhood, suffering, literature, Art, and all forms may be contemplated at that very moment where they fall away. Negroni virtuosically joins an intensity of form to a piercing use of image which swiftly dazzles and inevitably saddens, for life cannot be as perfect as this work of Art.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
María Negroni (b.1951) is an Argentinian poet, writer, translator, and essayist. She is the author of twelve books of poetry, two novels, and five collections of essays. Previous works translated into English include Islandia: A Poem, Night Journey (both translated by Ann Twitty), The Tango Lyrics, and Mouth of Hell (both translated by Michelle Gil-Montero). The essays in this book are taken from her essay collection Museo Negro (originally published in 1999).
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Michelle Gil-Montero has translated Poetry After the Invention of América: Don’t Light the Flower by Andrés Ajens (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), Mouth of Hell (Action Books 2013) and The Tango Lyrics (Quattro Books, 2012) by María Negroni, and This Blue Novel by Valerie Mejer (forthcoming from Action Books). She is the author of Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013). She lives in Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor of English at Saint Vincent College.