Coral Bracho
Encyclopedia
Coral Bracho is a Mexican
poet, translator, and doctor
of Literature
.
Bracho is winner of the Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship
in 2000. She received the 2004 Xavier Villaurrutia Award
for her book, Ese Espacio, Ese Jardin. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (National Artists’ Center), and in 2007 she was awarded the award “Programa de Aliento a la Obra Literaria de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas” in recognition of her work.
A selection from her first two collections was included in the definitive anthology of contemporary neo-baroque writing from Latin America, Medusario (1996), edited by Roberto Echavarren, José Koser and Jacobo Sefamí. Like many of the writers who operate in this line that runs from Luis de Góngora
through José Lezama Lima
, Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of world. When she visited London in 2005 she described the way that her tour-de-force ‘Agua de bordes lúbricos' [Water of Jellyfish] operates: ‘It tries to get close to the movement of water' with images that are ‘fleeting'; ‘you can't grasp them, they are very fluid. What remains is that continuity of water.'
The poems of La voluntad del ámbar introduce more autobiographical content. Both ‘Trazo del tiempo' [Marks of Time] and ‘Detrás de la cortina' [Behind the Curtain] recount direct memories of childhood. They also tend to rein in the long lines of the earlier collections, replacing fluid syntax with what Julio Trujillo has described as a versification that ‘no es, al cabo, una cuestión meramente rítmica sino casi silogística: el movimiento es conceptual, se pasa de una deducción a otra' [isn't, in the end, merely rhythmical but syllogistic; the movement is conceptual, it passes from one deduction to another]. That conceptual clarity is exercised further in Ese espacio, ese jardín, an extended meditation on the passage of time and the death at the heart of all life, which was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 2004.
Coral Bracho is also a translator of poetry and has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores since 1994.
In 2008, New Directions, New York, published Firefly under the Tongue translated by poet Forrest Gander.
“These poems are incandescent, submerged, sensate, intelligent in the way the universe isintelligent, at once cosmic and intimate. Coral Bracho creates a space so charmed andcharged I never wanted to leave it.” --Carole Maso
"Poetry may be the most immediately sensuous literary form, but its language tends to substitute for touch rather than enact it. To place the body in close relation with other bodies and objects involves an unsettling of the self within a larger passage from identities to intimacies. Coral Bracho stunned readers in Mexico by doing just this in her 1981 collection El ser que va a morir (Being toward Death), parts of which appear in Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho, beautifully translated by Forrest Gander. In Being toward Death, Bracho combines a quiet inwardness that is also a vulnerable openness: “(—Children trace their liquid howl on the bark, / as a vegetal ghost) // —The flames lick-out from the night, from its long roots. / —Its fluid / roundness, its coming to be / —From what I drink, what I touch.” In this poetic speaking, mouths and hands synonymously approach a densely textured materiality. Although Bracho frequently mentions death in her poems, nothing ever quite dies in them—rather, it takes on a different life and shape: “One blink is the dream, / another is death singing / with undisguised tenderness.” Bracho’s frequent use of parentheses in earlier poems and broken narratives in later ones signal not so much interruptions as shifts. Similarly, her writing has moved over the course of nearly three decades from a spatially fluid tactility to a crystalline attention to objects in time. A poem from 1998’s The Disposition of Amber reads in its entirety: “The posture of the trees, / as gesture, / is momental.” A later book, the long poem That Space, That Garden, synthesizes previous relational modes. As with other excerpts in the collection, one wishes there were more. Recent writing in Firefly under the Tongue limns experiences of bliss with a sense of mortality. But Bracho has always had the ability to make happiness seem slightly dangerous, as her poetry doesn’t so much speak the unspeakable as voice its constant and quavering proximity." --Alan Gilbert, The Boston Review
.
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
poet, translator, and doctor
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
of Literature
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
.
Bracho is winner of the Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize in 1981 and a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...
in 2000. She received the 2004 Xavier Villaurrutia Award
Xavier Villaurrutia Award
The Xavier Villaurrutia Award is a prestigious literary prize given in Mexico, to a Latin American writer published in Mexico. Founded in 1955, it was named in memory of Xavier Villaurrutia....
for her book, Ese Espacio, Ese Jardin. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte (National Artists’ Center), and in 2007 she was awarded the award “Programa de Aliento a la Obra Literaria de la Fundación para las Letras Mexicanas” in recognition of her work.
Works
Coral Bracho was born in Mexico City in 1951. She has published six books of poems: Peces de piel fugaz [Fish of Fleeting Skin] (1977), El ser que va a morir [The Being that is Going to Die] (1981), Tierra de entraña ardiente [Earth of Burning Entrails] (in collaboration with the painter Irma Palacios, 1992), La voluntad del ámbar [The Will of Amber] (1998), Ese espacio, ese jardín [That Space, That Garden] (2003), and Cuarto de hotel (2007). Her poems were translated for the PTC's 2005 World Poets' Tour by Tom Boll and the poet Katherine Pierpoint.A selection from her first two collections was included in the definitive anthology of contemporary neo-baroque writing from Latin America, Medusario (1996), edited by Roberto Echavarren, José Koser and Jacobo Sefamí. Like many of the writers who operate in this line that runs from Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora
Luis de Góngora y Argote was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered to be the most prominent Spanish poets of their age. His style is characterized by what was called culteranismo, also known as Gongorism...
through José Lezama Lima
José Lezama Lima
José Lezama Lima was a Cuban writer and poet who is considered one of the most influential figures in Latin American literature....
, Bracho's early poems marry verbal luxuriance with a keen intelligence and awareness of artistic process. Yet that artistic consciousness doesn't lose sight of world. When she visited London in 2005 she described the way that her tour-de-force ‘Agua de bordes lúbricos' [Water of Jellyfish] operates: ‘It tries to get close to the movement of water' with images that are ‘fleeting'; ‘you can't grasp them, they are very fluid. What remains is that continuity of water.'
The poems of La voluntad del ámbar introduce more autobiographical content. Both ‘Trazo del tiempo' [Marks of Time] and ‘Detrás de la cortina' [Behind the Curtain] recount direct memories of childhood. They also tend to rein in the long lines of the earlier collections, replacing fluid syntax with what Julio Trujillo has described as a versification that ‘no es, al cabo, una cuestión meramente rítmica sino casi silogística: el movimiento es conceptual, se pasa de una deducción a otra' [isn't, in the end, merely rhythmical but syllogistic; the movement is conceptual, it passes from one deduction to another]. That conceptual clarity is exercised further in Ese espacio, ese jardín, an extended meditation on the passage of time and the death at the heart of all life, which was awarded the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in 2004.
Coral Bracho is also a translator of poetry and has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores since 1994.
In 2008, New Directions, New York, published Firefly under the Tongue translated by poet Forrest Gander.
“These poems are incandescent, submerged, sensate, intelligent in the way the universe isintelligent, at once cosmic and intimate. Coral Bracho creates a space so charmed andcharged I never wanted to leave it.” --Carole Maso
"Poetry may be the most immediately sensuous literary form, but its language tends to substitute for touch rather than enact it. To place the body in close relation with other bodies and objects involves an unsettling of the self within a larger passage from identities to intimacies. Coral Bracho stunned readers in Mexico by doing just this in her 1981 collection El ser que va a morir (Being toward Death), parts of which appear in Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho, beautifully translated by Forrest Gander. In Being toward Death, Bracho combines a quiet inwardness that is also a vulnerable openness: “(—Children trace their liquid howl on the bark, / as a vegetal ghost) // —The flames lick-out from the night, from its long roots. / —Its fluid / roundness, its coming to be / —From what I drink, what I touch.” In this poetic speaking, mouths and hands synonymously approach a densely textured materiality. Although Bracho frequently mentions death in her poems, nothing ever quite dies in them—rather, it takes on a different life and shape: “One blink is the dream, / another is death singing / with undisguised tenderness.” Bracho’s frequent use of parentheses in earlier poems and broken narratives in later ones signal not so much interruptions as shifts. Similarly, her writing has moved over the course of nearly three decades from a spatially fluid tactility to a crystalline attention to objects in time. A poem from 1998’s The Disposition of Amber reads in its entirety: “The posture of the trees, / as gesture, / is momental.” A later book, the long poem That Space, That Garden, synthesizes previous relational modes. As with other excerpts in the collection, one wishes there were more. Recent writing in Firefly under the Tongue limns experiences of bliss with a sense of mortality. But Bracho has always had the ability to make happiness seem slightly dangerous, as her poetry doesn’t so much speak the unspeakable as voice its constant and quavering proximity." --Alan Gilbert, The Boston Review
Periodicals
Her poems have appeared in:- The American Poetry ReviewThe American Poetry ReviewThe American Poetry Review is an American poetry magazine printed every other month on tabloid-sized newsprint.Founded in 1972 by Stephen Berg, APR has always been published from editorial offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Berg is one of three editors, along with David Bonanno and Elizabeth...
- BOMB
- ConjunctionsConjunctionsConjunctions, is a biannual American literary journal based at Bard College. It was founded in 1981 and is currently edited by Bradford Morrow....
- The NationThe NationThe Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
- Poetry International WebPoetry International WebPoetry International Web is a monthly international webzine and an important poetry archive put together by a collective body of editors around the world and centrally edited in Rotterdam. The site presents poetry from 34 countries in their original languages and in English translation....
Collections
Bracho has had several books published collecting her works- Peces de piel fugaz (Fish of Fleeting Skin) (1977)
- Reissued as Huellas de Luz ("Tracks of Light") (1994, 2006)
- El ser que va a morir [The Being that is Going to Die] (1982)
- winner of El Premio Nacional de Poesia de Casa de la Cultura de Aguascalientes (Aguacalientes National Poetry Prize)
- Bajo el destello liguido (Beneath the Sparkling Liquid) (1988)
- Tierra de entraña ardiente (Earth's Smoldering Core) with the painter Irma Palacios (1992)
- La voluntad del ámbar (The Disposition of Amber) (1998)
- Of Their Eyes as Crystalline Sand, Duration Press (1999). Translated to English by poet Forrest GanderForrest GanderForrest Gander is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator.Born in the Mojave Desert, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A...
. - Watersilks, Poetry Ireland (1999). Translated from English, French and Portuguese.
- Trait du Temps/Trazo del Tiempo (Brush Strokes of Time) (2001)
- Ese espacio, ese jardín (That Space, That Garden) (2003)
- Winner of the Xavier VillaurrutiaXavier VillaurrutiaXavier Villaurrutia y González was a Mexican poet and playwright, whose most famous works are the short theatrical dramas, called Autos profanos, compiled in the work Poesía y teatro completos published in 1953....
Award
- Winner of the Xavier Villaurrutia
- ¿A donde fue el Ciempies? (Where was the Centipede?), Illustrations by Rafael Parajas (2007). Poetry for children.
- Cuarto de hotel (2007)
- Firefly Under the Tongue (New Directions, 2008)
Anthologies
Bracho's poems are also included in several anthologiesAnthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
.
- Líneas Conectadas: nueva poesía de los Estados Unidos (Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico), Sarabande BooksSarabande BooksSarabande Books is an American not-for-profit literary press founded in 1994, and located in Louisville, Kentucky, publishing poetry, fiction and nonfiction.The press was co-founded by Sarah Gorham and Jeffrey Skinner...
(2006), eds. Luis Cortes Bargallo and Forrest GanderForrest GanderForrest Gander is an American poet, essayist, novelist, critic, and translator.Born in the Mojave Desert, he was raised in Virginia where he attended The College of William and Mary, majoring in geology, a subject referenced frequently in both his poems and essays. He received an M.A... - Reversible Monuments: An Anthology of Contemporary Mexican Poetry, Copper Canyon PressCopper Canyon PressCopper Canyon Press is an independent, non-profit small press, specializing in the publication of poetry and located in the picturesque town of Port Townsend, Washington. Since 1972, the Press has published poetry exclusively and has established an international reputation for its commitment to...
(2002) - Medusario: Muestrade Poesia Latinoamericano/a, (A Sampling of Latin American Poetry), Fondo De Cultura Economico USA (1996), eds. Roberto Echaverren, Jose Kozer and Jacobo Safami
- Mouth to Mouth: Poems by Twelve Contemporary Mexican Women, Milkweed EditionsMilkweed EditionsMilkweed Editions is an independent, non-profit publishing company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Milkweed's goal is to make a positive impact on society through the transformative art of literature. Milkweed is sometimes called the largest independent, non-profit literary publisher in the United...
(1993)
General
- http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780811216845
- http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poets/single/Coral_Bracho
- http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/coral_bracho