ELAINE TERRANOVA [18.693]

Elaine Terranova

Elaine Terranova (nacida en 1939 en Filadelfia) es una poeta americana.

Se crió en Filadelfia, hija de Nathan y Sadie Goldstein. Permaneció en su ciudad natal completando su educación en la Universidad de Temple, donde se graduó en 1961 con una licenciatura en Inglés. Se casó con su primer marido Philip Terranova ese mismo año. Doce años después, en 1973, trabajó como editora de manuscritos para JB Lippincott & Co. Mientras trabajaba allí, asistió al Vermont Goddard College culminando en la obtención de su título de maestría en 1977. Su carrera se desplazó desde la edición hasta la educación y comenzó a enseñar Inglés creativo escrito en la Universidad de Temple hasta 1987, cuando comenzó a enseñar como un especialista en la lectura y escritura en el Community College de Filadelfia.

Desarrolló su pasión por escribir poesía y comenzó a publicar sus obras sin dejar de enseñar. Sus poemas han aparecido en varias publicaciones incluyendo The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review y Ploughshares.

Ella vive en Filadelfia.

Premios 

1990 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, chosen by Rita Dove

1992 Robert Frost Fellowship in Poetry, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

1993 “The Stand-up Shtel” took first prize in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Competition for poems on the Jewish experience.[4]

2006 Pew Fellowships in the Arts

2012 Pushcart Prize

Obras 

Toward Morning/Swimmers. Chester, PA: Hollow Spring. 1980. ISBN 978-0-936198-02-6. chapbook

The Cult of the Right Hand. New York: Doubleday. 1991. ISBN 978-0-385-41812-6.

Damages. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press. 1996. ISBN 978-1-55659-105-1.

The Dog’s Heart. Alexandria, VA: Orchises. 2002. ISBN 978-0-914061-90-8.

Not to: new & selected poems. Sheep Meadow Press. 2006. ISBN 978-1-931357-32-6.

Elegiac: Footnotes to Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Červená Barva Press. 2010. OCLC 752018800. chapbook

Dames Rocket. Rochester, VT: Penstroke Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-9669177-9-6.

Dollhouse. Somerville, MA: Off the Grid Press. 2013. ISBN 978-0-9778429-6-4.

Traducciones 

Euripides (1998). "Iphigenia in Aulis". In David R. Slavitt, Smith Palmer Bovie. Euripides: Alcestis. Daughters of Troy. The Phoenician women. Iphigenia at Aulis. Rhesus. Fred Chappell, Mark Rudman, Elaine Terranova, Richard Elman, George Economou. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1650-9.

Spanish version by Adalberto García López

El colibrí

Lo que con presagio y baile,

los gitanos parecen pasar fácilmente

entre mundos. El colibrí también

-sólo una polilla con pico-,

¿alguna vez lo he oído tararear?

Sin embargo, en todas partes es bienvenido,

seducido por flores rojas, incluso agua con azúcar,

por lo que somos deshonestos en nuestros deseos.

Y los muertos, los encarnamos

para nuestros propios intereses. No puedo hablar

con una sombra, con una abstracción.

Un devoto del sol, mi hermano,

siempre levantando su rostro hacia él.

Un contacto y el rugido del cuerpo se calmaba.

Ahora, a pesar de haber caminado por todo

el parque, él no está aquí.

Él está en ninguna parte bajo el sol.

Hummingbird

What with foresight and dancing,

gypsies would seem to pass easily

between worlds. The hummingbird too—

only a moth with a beak—

Have I ever heard it hum?

Yet it’s everywhere welcome,

coaxed by red flowers, even sugar water,

for we are devious, in our desires.

And the dead, we embody them

for our own purposes. I can’t talk

to a shadow, to an abstraction.

A sun worshiper, my brother,

always raising his face to it.

One touch and the body roar quieted.

Now, though I walk the length

of the park, he is not there.

He is nowhere under the sun.

I want the dead but I am with

the living. The tulips raise up their hands.

The lunch crowd swallows me.

http://circulodepoesia.com/2016/05/american-poetry-elaine-terranova/

Betrothal at the Well

At a well, a maiden (na'arah)

is drawing water.  A stranger arrives.

He is footsore, weary.  The maiden,

hospitable, invites him home.

The stranger has run away, he has

been driven away, he has come to seek

his fortune.  He has come for her.

This she knows and doesn't know.

She only hopes.  It is why she is

so often at the well. The water

is her future. Her brother welcomes him,

"Come in, O blessed of the Lord,"

examines the stranger's gifts, nose ring

and bracelets, that already attach

the maiden to him.  Not surprisingly,

the stranger asks for the maiden's hand.

Maybe not for himself, maybe he

is a servant, his master has sent him.

If so she has wasted that first look

with her heart.  And he, his imagining,

his anticipation.  Could it be otherwise?

Behold: a manservant, in spite of his thirst.

A cipher, only meant to hold the place.

The covenant depends on it.

Death Came at Me

on a motorcycle

into the intersection at 50 miles per

with no helmet

arms open,

legs branching.

Ahead, I saw him, and behind

in the rearview, where he

completed the turn,

separate

from his simple machine,

sheen of red on asphalt.

And wasn't that death, too,

halting but deliberate,

weak and in rags,

death, unmistakable,

approaching our fancy,

outdoor lunch

as my friend tapped out her troubles:

not good

no more

not again,

-which was her life-

with a teaspoon on the table.

I wouldn't look up, wouldn't give

the dollar's worth

of attention he demanded,

something to eat.  But I found him

again, later, another day, taste

of morning, steel in my mouth,

Death, advancing

at the same

ceremonial pace.

Mint

 Already, we’d be driving past

those trees, that part of the forest.

Even briefly, it refreshed you.

It was like mint in August

though that sting would be gone

with summer. The ground

tarnishing first, and soon the leaves.

I thought then, men don’t stop.

They want so much to get on.

What we said, incidental

yet hammered into the mind.

Talk like a magnet, so it draws you

together or away. We made a line

around that part of the forest,

the exact shape of our attention.

Even after, I remember

how it was taken up and moved

along with us, into the dim

living room. Each holding a glass,

ice colliding in water. A tiny

mirrored sun caught in the trees.

The same sadness that darkened

our features. Later, bed

without making love, without

the chance of a reprieve.

Return to Winter

 That day the starlings didn’t eat.

That day was a sudden return

to winter. In the fields,

snow on a base of ice.

The birds couldn’t bear

to set down except

on the clear face

of the road they remembered.

My husband leaned on the horn

the way you lean on a railing

until they lifted

before the unstoppable metal.

I pushed into the floorboard

as if I were doing the driving,

as if I could halt

the laws of physics,

while somewhere, my brother’s chest

rose and sunk and rose.

So much you take for granted,

like going to sleep in spring

that you will wake in spring.

That the blossoms were right

to push out, there was

no contradiction.

But when we hit the slick

and slammed hard against

our own forward motion,

the roadbank spun

and the orchard of stunted trees

that had just begun to soften.

.