Poetry, Translations

Praises & Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic Translated

by Aida Cartagena Portalatín, Angela Hernández Núñez, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo, Judith Kerman

Aida Cartagena Portalatín

Angela Hernández Núñez

Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo

While the three poets presented in this bilingual collection present a rich contrast of linguistic and stylistic elements, each of them addresses shared political and cultural issues, illuminating what it means to be a woman living in the modern day Dominican Republic. Judith Kerman, who has translated a number of female poets from the Caribbean, notes that “contemporary women poets from the Dominican Republic are the most under-served group when it comes to English-language translation, in particular full-length collections or anthologies.” Thus, this exciting new anthology from BOA contains much that was previously unavailable to the English reader, and is a unique literary event to be celebrated. "Praises & Offenses is proof positive that going South is a worthwhile journey." --Molossus

A Woman is Alone

A woman is alone. Alone with her stature.
With her open eyes. With her open arms.
With her heart open like a wide silence.
She waits in the desperate and despairing night without losing hope.
She thinks she is in the flagship
with the saddest light of creation.
Already she has hoisted her sails and let herself be carried by the North wind
in accelerated flight before the eyes of love.

A woman is alone. She holds her dreams fast with dreams,
the dreams that remain to her, and all the sky of the Antilles.
Solemn and quiet before the world that is a human stone,
in motion, adrift, lost in the sense
of its own word, its useless word.

A woman is alone. She thinks that now everything is nothing
and no one says anything from the party to the mourning
about the blood that leaps, about the blood that runs
about the blood that is born or dies of death.

Nobody comes forward to offer her a dress
to clothe her voice that sobs naked, spelling itself.

A woman is alone. She feels, and her truth drowns----
in thoughts that translate the beauty of the rose,
of the star, of love, of man and of God.

by Aída Cartagena Portalatín

© BOA Editions, Ltd 2009

Available Editions:
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Paperback $16.00
Publishing Date: 2009

FormatPaperback

ISBN978-1-934414-30-9

$16.00

About the Author

Aida Cartagena Portalatín

Born in Moca, Santo Domingo in 1918, Aida Cartagena Portalatín is most widely known for her poetry, focusing on man's limitations in the struggle for liberty. She received her doctorate from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, and in 1965 she was appointed as an advisor to UNESCO in Paris. One of her most widely acknowledged poems, "Una Mujer está Sola" (1953) exemplifies her exploration of the lives of women in the modern Dominican Republic.

Angela Hernández Núñez

Angela Hernández Núñez was born in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic in 1954, and began writing as a teenager. Although she graduated with honors in chemical engineering from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, she has received widespread recognition for her commitment to literary and feminist endeavors. She is an active supporter of organizations promoting academics, criticism, and women poets in the Dominican Republic, and is well-known as a poet, writer of short-stories, and essayist. Through her poetry she challenges the literary status-quo of her country, and facilitates the creation of a Dominican literary tradition of and for women.

Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo

Born 1965, Ylonka Nacidit-Perdomo studied Law and Political Science at the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo. Poet, essayist, and literary critic, she has been a leading editor, publisher and promoter of literary works by Dominican women and served as Director of Research at the Dominican National Library. Her poems have been published in Common Threads Afro-Hispanic, Women’s Literature, Supplement 14 International Poetry, Y vamos hacienda camino, Revista Mairena, and Confluencia. She has published seven poetry collections, including Luna Barroca (1996), Triángulo en trébol (2001), and Contemplación (2007), as well as several books of literary criticism and numerous essays about Dominican literature. For her book Altagracia Saviñon o la discontinuidad del instante, she won the Best Editor Essay Award for 1998 from the International Writers and Artists Association. She is currently the president of the Association of Dominican Literary Criticism of Hispanic-American Women Writers (CDLEH) and also directs the Founding Committee of Women’s Festivals and the “Ventana” collection of the Solidarity Center for the Development of Women (Ce-Mujer) in Santo Domingo. She lives in Santo Domingo, DR.

Judith Kerman

Judith Kerman is a poet, performer, and artist who has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent work, Galvanic Response was published by March Street Press. She has published two translations from Spanish: A Woman in Her Garden: Selected Poems of Dulce María Loynaz (White Pine Press, 2002) and Praises and Offenses: Three Women Poets from the Dominican Republic (BOA Editions, 2009). Kerman was a Fulbright Scholar to the Dominican Republic where she translated poetry and fiction by Dominican women. She was also awarded the Abbie M. Kopps Poetry Prize and an Honorable Mention from the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award.