The Sealey Challenge, Day 30: Plagios/Plagerisms, vol. 2 by Ulalume González de León, translated by Terry Ehret, John Johnson and Nancy J. Morales

I am so extraordinarily fortunate to have as companions in my two poetry critique groups poets who are talented, and hard working, and kind. This past week I celebrated my birthday, and I spent a lot of the day wondering what wonderful things I had done in a past life to deserve the good friends I have in this one. If one believed such a thing. I am humbled with gratitude. All that to say that the pleasure of reading this volume of González de León's poetry in translation (with the original on the verso) was doubled by knowing two of the translators fairly well. Sixteen Rivers Press is a solid publishing collective, and I've day-dreamed about applying in the past. I really enjoyed these poems, and was surprised how much of the original language I could read without the translation, and understand and appreciate. I can't imagine how difficult it was to translate these poems. They are deceptively simple in terms of the language and provocative and profound in terms of the meaning.