A Conversation with Luis Alberto de Cuenca.
Luis Alberto de Cuenca (b. 1950, Madrid) is perhaps the one Spanish poet today who has influenced most of the younger generations of poets. He recently received the National Poetry Award for his latest book of poetry, Cuaderno de vacaciones (Visor, 2014). His poetry combines urban reality, pop culture, and classical antiquity while maintaining his own identity through irony, elegance, and a tone of lightheartedness. Cuenca is capable of having Tintin dialogue with Shakespeare in his poems, or Homer with a streetwalker in Madrid. Urban poetry, pierced with film noir by either the fantastic or the comic, has been able to reflect today’s sentimental iconography and create images, capturing a society whose culture (in times of consumerism) is geared toward the myths of daily life—poems that aspire fundamentally to express love, sentimental wandering in a changing world, nomadic man, nightlife, or the open field of culture—all by utilizing an extremely natural language that embraces the reader in an emotive, colloquial, and intelligible way.
Diego Doncel: Could you explain to the North American reader the meaning of the aesthetics of “Línea clara,” which begins with your book La caja de plata, published in 1985?
Denne historien er fra September - October 2016-utgaven av World Literature Today.
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Denne historien er fra September - October 2016-utgaven av World Literature Today.
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Our Revenge Will Be the Laughter of Our Children
What is it about the revolutionary that draws our fascinated attention? Whether one calls it the North of Ireland or Northern Ireland, the Troubles continue to haunt the land and those who lived through them.
Turtles
In a field near the Gaza Strip, a missile strike, visions, and onlookers searching for an explanation.
Surviving and Subverting the Totalitarian State: A Tribute to Ismail Kadareby Kapka Kassabova
As part of the ceremony honoring Kadare as the 2020 laureate—with participants logging in from dozens of countries around the world— Kadare’s nominating juror, Kapka Kassabova, offered a video tribute from her home in Scotland.
Dead Storms and Literature's New Horizon: The 2020 Neustadt Prize Lecture
During the Neustadt Prize ceremony on October 21, 2020, David Bellos read the English language version of Kadare’s prize lecture to a worldwide Zoom audience.
Ismail Kadare: Winner of the 2020 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, World Literature Today presented the 2020 Neustadt Festival 100 percent online. In the lead-up to the festival, U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim officially presented the award to Kadare at a ceremony in Tirana in late August, attended by members of Kadare’s family; Elva Margariti, the Albanian minister of culture; and Besiana Kadare, Albania’s ambassador to the United Nations.
How to Adopt a Cat
Hoping battles knowing in this three-act seduction (spoiler alert: there’s a cat in the story).
Chicken Soup: The Story of a Jewish Family
Chickens, from Bessarabia to New York City, provide a generational through-line in these four vignettes.
Awl
“Awl” is from a series titled “Words I Did Not Understand.” Through memory—“the first screen of nostalgia”—and language, a writer pieces together her story of home.
Apocalyptic Scenarios and Inner Worlds
A Conversation with Gloria Susana Esquivel
Marie's Proof of Love
People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by?
