Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020 - Paperback

by Gloria Gervitz (Author), Mark Schafer (Translator)

An epic, single-poem tribute to the spirit of women, this is the first complete and final translation of the great Mexican poet's magnum opus.

Forty-four years in the making, Migrations is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of modern Mexican literature. Gloria Gervitz's book, winner of the 2019 Pablo Neruda Ibero-American Poetry Prize, is an epic journey in free verse through the individual and collective memories of Jewish women emigrants from Eastern Europe, a conversation that ranges across two thousand years of poetry, a bridge that spans the oracles of ancient Greece and the markets of modern Mexico, a prayer that blends the Jewish and Catholic liturgies, a Mexican woman's reclamation through poetry of her own voice and erotic power. In its reach, audacity, and astonishing vitality, Gervitz's extraordinary life's work bears comparison to the achievements of HD, Lorine Niedecker, Ezra Pound, and Walt Whitman.

Author Biography

Gloria Gervitz (1943-2022) was a poet and translator born in Mexico City into an Eastern European Jewish immigrant family. She was awarded the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry in 2019. Her main body of work is Migraciones, a single poem that evolved organically over forty-four years. Gervitz translated works of poetry by Samuel Beckett, Kenneth Rexroth, Lorine Niedecker, Susan Howe, and Rita Dove into Spanish.

Mark Schafer is a literary translator, a visual artist, and a senior lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he teaches Spanish. He has translated works by authors from around the Spanish-speaking world, including David Huerta, Belén Gopegui, Virgilio Piñera, and Alberto Ruy Sánchez. Schafer is a founding member of the Boston Area Literary Translators Group. He lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the traditional and unceded territory of the Massachusett and Wampanoag Peoples.