CECILIA WOLOCH [18.596]

Cecilia Woloch

Cecilia Woloch, (Pittsburgh, Estados Unidos, 1956), poeta americana, escritora y profesora, conocida por su trabajo en las comunidades en todo los EE.UU. y en todo el mundo.

Woloch nació en Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, y creció allí, en la zona rural de Kentucky. Obtuvo una licenciatura en la Universidad de Transilvania en Lexington, Kentucky, y un MFA de la Universidad de Antioquía, Los Ángeles.

Bajo la influencia de Anna Ajmátova, WS Merwin, y Walt Whitman, Woloch escribe poemas líricos. Muchos de sus poemas surgen de sus largos viajes. También escribe prosa autobiográfica y ficción y colabora de forma regular con artistas visuales, artistas de teatro, músicos y bailarines.

Woloch ha llevado a cabo talleres de escritura creativa para niños y jóvenes, ancianos, reclusos en una prisión para criminales dementes, y para las residentes en un refugio para mujeres y niños sin hogar. 

Bibliografía 

Sacrifice (1997)

Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem (2002)

Late (2003)

Narcissus (2008)

Carpathia (2009)

Earth (2015)

Sur la Route (2015)

La poesía de Woloch ha sido publicada en revistas como The Mississippi Review , Nimrod , Tin House , The New Ohio Review , The Indiana Review and New Letters.

Sus ensayos han aparecido en The Crab Orchard Review, New Southerner , and the Journal of Polish American Historical Association.

Premios y distinciones 

Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, 2011

Indiana Review Prize in Poetry, 2014

New Ohio Review Prize in Poetry (First Prize), 2009

USC Center for Excellence in Teaching FIUT Grant, 2007–08

Tupelo Press Snowbound Series Chapbook Award, 2006

Georgia Author of the Year, Georgia Writers Association, 2004

 Chicos lentos jugando

Los chicos rápidos ya han entrado, urgidos

por sus madres a date-prisa-lávate-las-manos

cariño-la-cena-se-enfría-espera-a-que-venga-tu-padre

y sólo los chicos lentos permanecen en el jardín, trazando

senderos entre las luciérnagas, haciendo ruiditos con la boca, oh,

ese resplandor, y se apaga y se enciende. Y sus lentas madres parpadean

pálidas en el crepúsculo, mirándolos girar en el aire suave, mirándolos

dar vueltas, los brazos abiertos y extendidos, mientras piensan Este es mi hijo,

¿Dónde está su cena? ¿Adónde ha ido su padre?

Good Poems for Hard Times, Penguin Books, Nueva York, 2005.

Versión de Jonio González

SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY

All the quick children have gone inside, called

by their mothers to hurry-up-wash-your-hands

honney-dinner’s-getting-cold-just-wait-till-your-father-gets-home

and only the slow children out on the lawns, marking off

paths between fireflies, making soft little sounds with their mouths, ohs

that glow, and go out and glow. And their slow mothers flickering,

pale in the dusk, watching them turn in the gentle air, watching them

twirling, their arms spread wide, thinking, These are my children, thinking,

Where is their dinner? Where has their father gone?

Crianças lentas brincando 

Todas as crianças rápidas foram para dentro, ao chamado 

de suas mães para lavar-as-mãos, espere-só-até-seu-pai-chegar-em-casa

e apenas as crianças lentas permanecem fora de casa, no gramado

caminhando entre os vaga-lumes, fazendo pequenos sons suaves com suas bocas,

ohs, esse brilho e saem e brilham. E suas mães piscam lentamente,

pálidas ao entardecer, observando-os girar delicados no ar, observando-os

rodopiando, seus braços abertos, pensando, Estes são os meus filhos,

pensando: Onde está o seu jantar? Onde fora seu pai?

Traducción: Norma De Souza Lopes

Anniversary 

Didn't I stand there once, 

white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper, 

swearing I'd never go back? 

And hadn't you kissed the rain from my mouth? 

And weren't we gentle and awed and afraid, 

knowing we'd stepped from the room of desire 

into the further room of love? 

And wasn't it sacred, the sweetness 

we licked from each other's hands? 

And were we not lovely, then, were we not 

as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame? 

My Mother's Pillow 

My mother sleeps with the Bible open on her pillow; 

she reads herself to sleep and wakens startled. 

She listens for her heart: each breath is shallow. 

For years her hands were quick with thread and needle. 

She used to sew all night when we were little; 

now she sleeps with the Bible on her pillow 

and believes that Jesus understands her sorrow: 

her children grown, their father frail and brittle; 

she stitches in her heart, her breathing shallow. 

Once she even slept fast , rushed tomorrow, 

mornings full of sunlight, sons and daughters. 

Now she sleeps alone with the Bible on her pillow 

and wakes alone and feels the house is hollow, 

though my father in his blue room stirs and mutters; 

she listens to him breathe: each breath is shallow. 

I flutter down the darkened hallway, shadow 

between their dreams, my mother and my father, 

asleep in rooms I pass, my breathing shallow. 

I leave the Bible open on her pillow. 

The Pick 

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun, 

breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock, 

and the rocks into dust, 

and the dust into earth again. 

I must have sat for a very long time on the split rail fence, 

just watching him. 

My father's body glistened with sweat, 

his arms flew like dark wings over his head. 

He was turning the backyard into terraces, 

breaking the hill into two flat plains. 

I took for granted the power of him, 

though it frightened me, too. 

I watched as he swung the pick into the air 

and brought it down hard 

and changed the shape of the world, 

and changed the shape of the world again. 

From Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem

          “Oh Europe is so many borders

                    on every border, murderers”

                                        — Attila Josef, Hungarian Poet

All night crossing the Tatra,

Krakow to Budapest, the train

only three cars long — where is my friend?

Ken, who calls me Regina Cecylia,

Queen of the Gypsies, Carpathia.

We’ve travelled together from Berlin

but now the dining car between our cars

is locked — I can’t get through.

In these couchettes, only one other woman,

the small boy who clings to her, hiding his face,

and the porter who’s taken my ticket,

refuses in Polish to give it back.

Lie down then, let this pass:

the window a square of black glass

in which bare trees, fields appear;

forests where I could be left,

this car uncoupled —who would know?

(500,000 gypsies burned in the crematoria)

At each border (which country now?)

a clapboard shack with its plume of smoke

and the guards in their high boots,

their stink of cigar, who throw back

the door of my compartment, flick

on the lights, demand documents.

What if I had no passport, no papers

to prove I’m American?

What if I’d been born

in the tiny village my grandmother fled?

What if I had no country —

would I be no one, then, to them?

Would they drag me into the woods;

would the quiet woman hold her child

a little closer, cover his ears?

Sleeping and waking and sleeping again;

disappearing into the dream, waking into the dream

of Budapest: it’s snowing so softly

the golden domes that crown the city seem to float.

At dawn, the grim porter reappears

with black coffee, sugar, two hard rolls,

my ticket, crumpled, on the tray.

I jump off the train with my suitcase

into the station’s soot and din,

into the arms of ragged men —

gypsies everywhere, suddenly, flocks of them,

chanting like sorcerers, surrounding me,

calling out, Taxi! Taxi! Room!

I’ve read that, in caverns under these stations

— Sofia, Bucharest, Budapest —

gypsy orphans live on glue, pimped

for candy, for cigarettes.

But no children greet me here —

only these dark men I turn from, refuse,

and my tall friend, rushing toward me

down the crowded platform now:

silently, given back, at last,

my name in his throat like a jewel.

.