Panic Cure: Poetry from Spain for the 21st Century

Poetry. Edited and translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander. Previously published by Shearsman Books in 2013, the poets featured in this revised and expanded edition are Antonio Gamoneda, Olvido García Valdés, Miguel Casado, Marcos Canteli, Sandra Santana, Benito del Pliego, Julia Piera, Ana Gorría, Pilar Fraile Amador, Esther Ramón, and J.M. Antolín. This bilingual selection... introduces a limited group of little-known contemporary Spanish poets to American readers interested in innovative writing beyond debates about official and non-official verse cultures. Furthermore, it is an invitation to leave the comfort zone of literary histories; it affords an alternative view of domestic poetic discourses of any persuasion. Beyond personal preferences, the discursive displacement specific to translation alters the all-too-familiar either/or debates dominating national poetry scenes. In this light, PANIC CURE may contribute to opening up the largely inbred industry of modern Spanish poetry, if only because its readers will be hard put to consider it yet another attempt at settling family quarrels.--Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza

About the Author :
Born in California's Mojave Desert, poet Forrest Gander grew up in Virginia and attended the College of William & Mary, where he majored in geology. After receiving an MA in literature from San Francisco State University, Gander moved to Mexico, then to Arkansas, where his poetry--informed by his knowledge of geology--turned its attention to landscape as foreground or source of action. Gander's books of poetry include Eiko & Koma (2013), Core Samples from the World (2011), Eye Against Eye (2005), Torn Awake (2001), and Science & Steepleflower (1998). Though primarily a poet, Gander is also a translator, novelist, essayist, and the editor of two anthologies, including PANIC CURE: POETRY FROM SPAIN FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (Shearsman Books, 2013). He has translated collections by Mexican poets Pura Lopez Colomé and Coral Bracho. With Kent Johnson he translated Bolivian poet Jaime Saenz's Immanent Visitor and The Night (2007), for which he won a PEN Translation Award. His translations of Neruda are included in The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems (2004). He also edited the bilingual anthology Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women (1993). Gander's own poetry has been translated into several languages. His novel, As a Friend, was published in 2008. Gander has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Whiting, Howard, and United States Artists Foundations and is the recipient of a Witter Bynner- Library of Congress award.