Reborn in Ink
By Laura Cesarco Eglin. The Word Works, 2019. 133 pages.
Co-translated by Catherine Jagoe and Jesse Lee Kercheval
ISBN 978-1-944585-31-0
Available from Word Works
“These poems excel in the art of astonishing transformation. Lipstick becomes a remembrance of the selection line of life versus death in the Holocaust. An eyelash becomes the site of all hope, glued to the chest, and brushing hair turns into a chance to learn “eccentricity in community.” These beautiful translations seem to know their own irresistibility, as they capture the poet’s understanding that her work will be translated: “these tears that escape translation / but are in fact translated as I say—Help me.” It may be simpler to call this book Uruguayan poetry or Jewish poetry, but it is more accurate to say, here is Laura Cesarco Eglin, a poet of eyelashes, hopes, and the world itself.”
“The shadow of her father’s death and that of her European Jewish ancestry haunts this lyrical collection, Reborn in Ink, by the contemporary Uruguayan poet Laura Cesarco Eglin, which is always alert to the power of the unsaid evoked by words. The poems are deftly translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe, who are mindful that “the pauses make / the reading.” The elegiac tone of these beautiful poems attests to poetry’s ability to transform loss into rebirth.”
“Laura Cesarco deals with daily life, personal observations, and reflections; in her poems language becomes a testing ground. She constantly uses the sounds of words, making them heard as the text unfolds. An inspired book.”
