Poetry, Translations

Engravings Torn from Insomnia

Although Olga Orozco has won almost every major literary award from her native Argentina and her work has been translated into fifteen languages, no single volume of her poetry exists in English — until now. Award-winning translator/Colorado Poet Laureate Mary Crow has chosen the finest of Orozco’s poems for this long-awaited Spanish-English bilingual collection, Engravings Torn from Insomnia.

The Stranger

He passed among you,
people kindly as the fire's warmth in a neighboring hut.
But what was your accent except a jagged dagger quivering
in the depth of his breast? He watched you pass,
days drowsy as beasts in humble pastures.
But what was your peace except sand burning under his eyelids?
Far away the wind blew leaving no cheeks salty.
Far away a place exists for his shade beside the fresh shades
of his ancestors.
Far away he will be the absent one less absent now.
Oh, dry your tears
that do not quench the thirst of the stranger.
Keep your prayers:
he didn't ask for love or any other heavenly exile.
And let earth lift up its lullabies like an insulted stepmother:
"I bear a heart as harsh and angry as the leaf of the fig tree."

© BOA Editions, Ltd 2002

Available editions:
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Cloth ISBN: 1-929918-31-3
Price: $22.00
Publishing Date: December 2002
Paperback ISBN: 1-929918-30-5
Price: $13.95
Publishing Date: December 2002

FormatPaperback , Hardcover

Publication DateDecember 1, 2002

ISBN1-929918-30-5

From $13.95

About the Author

Mary Crow

Mary Crow is the author of five collections of poetry and four translations including three from BOA Editions: Borders (1989), I Have Tasted the Apple (1996) and Engravings Torn from Insomnia by Olga Orozco (2002) which she translated from the Spanish. A Professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, Crow has received many writing awards including a poetry fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts and a Fulbright Creative Writing Award. She serves as the Poet Laureate of Colorado. For more information about Mary Crow, visit www.marycrowthepoet.com

Olga Orozco

Olga Orozco (1920-1999) was one of the major 20th-century South American writers and the author of 20 books of poetry, including Engravings Torn from Insomnia, translated by Mary Crow (BOA, 2002). Her work spanned more than 50 years, received more than a dozen national, regional, and municipal prizes and has been translated into more than 15 languages.