MAXINE CHERNOFF [10.850]

Maxine Chernoff 

Nacida en 1952 en Chicago, Illinois, EE.UU. y asistió a la Universidad de Illinois en Chicago. Novelista, escritora, poeta, académica y editora de revistas literarias.

Es fan de la literatura de América Latina y sus primeros poemas en prosa reconocen la influencia de Julio Cortázar y Clarice Lispector. Maxine es titular de la cátedra de Escritura Creativa en la Universidad Estatal de San Francisco, editora de New American Writing, y de Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin, laureado con el PEN USA Translation Award 2009 junto a Paul Hoover. Ha publicado 14 libros de poemas, recientemente To Be Read in the Dark (Omnidawn 2011) y Without (Shearsman 2012). Su próximo libro, Here, del cual es tomado este poema, será publicado por Counterpath Press en 2014. Maxine es NEA Fellow 2013 en poesía y Visiting International Scholar en la Universidad de Exeter en Devon, Inglaterra.

Obras 

Novelas 

A Boy in Winter (Crown Publishing, 1999; Harper Flamingo Australia, 2000)

American Heaven (Coffee House Press, 1996), a finalist for the Bay Area Book

Reviewers Award

Plain Grief (Summit, 1991; available as e-book from Previewport.com, 2001)

Cuentos 

Some of Her Friends That Year: New & Selected Stories (Coffee House Press, 2002), a finalist for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award

Signs of Devotion: (stories) (Simon & Schuster, 1993) a New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 1993.

Bop , stories (Coffee House Press, 1986; Vintage Contemporaries, 1987)

Poesía

"Without" (Shearsman, England, 2012)

A House in Summer" (Argotist Press, England, 2012)

To Be Read in the Dark" (Omnidawn, 2011)

The Turning , (Apogee Press, 2008)

Among the Names , (Apogee Press, 2005)

Evolution of the Bridge: Selected Prose Poems (Salt Publications, 2005)

World: Poems 1991–2001 (Salt Publications, 2001)

Leap Year Day: New & Selected Poems (Another Chicago Press, 1990; Jensen Daniels, 1999)

Japan (Avenue B Press, 1988)

New Faces of 1952 (Ithaca House, 1985)

Utopia TV Store (The Yellow Press, 1979)

A Vegetable Emergency , prose poems (Beyond Baroque Foundation, 1976)

The Last Aurochs (Now Press, 1976)

Editora

Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin , co-translated with Paul Hoover; (Omnidawn, 2008)

New American Writing (with Paul Hoover), (1986) — present)

Premios 

1985 Carl Sanburg Award,

1985 PEN New Books Award

1986 Friends of American Writers' Award

1986 LSU Southern Review Fiction Award

1993 Sun-Times Fiction Prize

1988 CCLM Editors' Award

2002 Marin Arts Council Fellowship

1996 and 2002 BABRA finalist

2009 PEN Translation Award

5 Illinois Arts Council Fellowships

2013 NEA Poetry Fellowship

Hay un mundo para cada apetito

—Bachelard

Fuiste protagonista de la película con Maud Gonne y Sócrates y Julieta y una bandada de gorriones que eran un punto fijo como la aguja de una catedral pero hecha de plumas. Estabas con ropa y sin ropa y no tenías puesto nada visible salvo cuando te sentaste o te paraste y empezaste a hablar, y entonces las palabras estaban hechas de hilo negro y tus dedos las sostenían como en el esquema de un sueño. Estabas ahí y no ahí cuando en parte te sostuve, la idea de vos se fue apagando hasta volverse la insinuación de un dejo de luz junto a una ventana en un cielo bien al oeste. Y bajo la ventana, tu cara no era íntima como las de esas personas que uno ama sino más vaga y por tanto más íntima en su complejidad sombría. Si el agua es la prueba de la sed y lo cognoscible se cierra sobre sí como una hora de satisfacción con un libro, entonces las historias pueden terminar mientras empiezan sin el sufijo del tiempo y sus presiones. Fuiste protagonista de la película, y ciertas necesidades volaron como figuras animadas por su propio reconocimiento.

traducción de Valeria Meiller

Lost and Found

I am looking for the photo that would make all the difference in my life. It’s very small and subject to fits of amnesia, turning up in poker hands, grocery carts, under the unturned stone. The photo shows me at the lost and found looking for an earlier photo, the one that would have made all the difference then. My past evades me like a politician. Wielding a fly-swatter, it destroys my collection of cereal boxes, my childhood lived close to the breakfast table. Only that photo can help me locate my fourteen lost children, who look just like me. When I call the Bureau of Missing Persons, they say, “Try the Bureau of Missing Photos.” They have a fine collection. Here’s one of Calvin Coolidge’s seventh wedding. Here’s one of a man going over a cliff on a dogsled. Here’s my Uncle Arthur the night he bought the prize peacock. O photo! End your tour of the world in a hot air balloon. Resign your job at the mirror-testing laboratory. Come home to me, you little fool, before I find I can live without you.

Granted

A film is always like a book and not like a conversation.

                                — Christian Metz

As I saw your face nearing

my face, snow fell through

a keyhole and opened the door.

We went inside and watched

windows wax green and gold.

Spring, we decided, was more

oppressive than winter with

its alyssum and clover

and the sheer weight of life

crowding us off the page.

We stayed in bed for years

and took our cures patiently

from each other’s cups.

We read Bleak House and

stored our money in socks.

Nothing opened as we did.

Scene

The cinema is a specific language.

           — Christian Metz

What the body might guess,

what the hand requests,

what language assumes

becomes amulet,

which is to say

I am carrying your face

in a locket in a box

to a virtual location

guarded by kestrels,

suggesting the scene’s

geography of love and dirt,

trees ripe with darkness

and bones’ white luster.

In the moonlit blue house,

where snow won’t fall

unless called upon,

grace enters as requested,

lands next to you, grasped,

as if love were a reflex

simple as weather.

SHE SHOWS YOU WHERE TO LOOK

Names and forms

and from a crouch

a trial before breathing.

Mirages bruised,

"big fluffy flakes,"

speech, and notions.

The nations scattered,

an attitude of blue--

useless preface to

the waves bleeding,

the hand, occult,

the name erased

by jazz and heartstrings.

Orpheus misspelled.

Her eager thoughts,

stumbling, spare.

A fickle calypso

moving in

the distance,

like June light

in broken

February sky.

BENEATH THE FORM

A Zen student

and a great blue heron.

A Christmas wreath

and her short blue dress.

The dust of art,

best name for

a colorless liquid.

The concept of God,

hungry and receding.

Poet as laborer,

the uses of stone

on Saturdays

when momentary release

gives way to eternal

dilemma, when

Sam asks Darryl

to pull over

at the next translation.

Tainted author

of your own sad

birth, between breaths

you are your own

witness, your own

excavation.

CARE

As a tableau

in search of innocence

she looked desperate,

translated, lured

by approval toward

metaphor and soup.

He had the presence

of a king, kindly

providing

a counterexample

of grace and obedience.

As in "history is

broken," consciousness

breathing, all notions

sinister. Inside

the room, they staged

the definitive production

of the quest motif

in Western corporations.

We waited, dewy-eyed,

naked, more observers

than readers, more

smoke than guarantees.