Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic Translated

Aida Cartagena Portalatín 

Angela Hernández Núñez 

Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo 

While the three poets presented in this bilingual collection present a rich contrast of linguistic and stylistic elements, each of them addresses shared political and cultural issues, illuminating what it means to be a woman living in the modern day Dominican Republic. Judith Kerman, who has translated a number of female poets from the Caribbean, notes that “contemporary women poets from the Dominican Republic are the most under-served group when it comes to English-language translation, in particular full-length collections or anthologies.” Thus, this exciting new anthology from BOA contains much that was previously unavailable to the English reader, and is a unique literary event to be celebrated.  "Praises & Offenses is proof positive that going South is a worthwhile journey." --Molossus

A Woman is Alone

A woman is alone. Alone with her stature.
With her open eyes. With her open arms.
With her heart open like a wide silence.
She waits in the desperate and despairing night without losing hope.
She thinks she is in the flagship
with the saddest light of creation.
Already she has hoisted her sails and let herself be carried by the North wind
in accelerated flight before the eyes of love.

A woman is alone. She holds her dreams fast with dreams,
the dreams that remain to her, and all the sky of the Antilles.
Solemn and quiet before the world that is a human stone,
in motion, adrift, lost in the sense
of its own word, its useless word.

A woman is alone.  She thinks that now everything is nothing
and no one says anything from the party to the mourning
about the blood that leaps, about the blood that runs
about the blood that is born or dies of death.

Nobody comes forward to offer her a dress
to clothe her voice that sobs naked, spelling itself.

A woman is alone.  She feels, and her truth drowns----
in thoughts that translate the beauty of the rose,
of the star, of love, of man and of God.

by Aída Cartagena Portalatín

© BOA Editions, Ltd 2009

Available Editions:
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Paperback $16.00
Publishing Date: 2009