Romina Freschi, translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas

Romina Freschi's Echo of the Park is a philosophical long poem that surveys made spaces, both elevated and debased. In dialogue with First Dream by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Freschi captures fleeting states of grace, such as "ecstasy" and "bliss," and the ensuing gravitational pull of urban life's "imperfect terrain." All urban spaces are interior and exterior, private and public, confining and freeing. Ultimately the park, and the "parkified" speech of the poem, are sites of mourning. Can a former site of political violence be converted into a public green space? Jeannine Marie Pitas's nuanced translation presents Romina Freschi as one of the most singular and startling voices in contemporary Argentine poetry.

"Romina Freschi's Echo of the Park explores dualities of capture and flight. Held by power, routine, poison, cultivation, gravity's many forms? Her language honors ecstatic breakthrough, a feathered bird named Sor Juana, an interspecies heart, introspective focus, and passage to deep grief, and altogether punctuates turbulence with a rare calm." --Deborah Meadows, author of Translation, the bass accompaniment--Selected Poems

Review at Latin American Literature Today

Poetry, English & Spanish

Publication date: September 20, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1732936317

Format: Softcover, 108 pages, 6"x9"

Ebook Format: download here