The Liquid Pour in which my Heart has Run

<p>Known as the Phoenix of the Americas and The Tenth Muse Sor Juana In��s de la Cruz was a scholar poet and cloistered nun. Her poetry like her singular life is fired with intensity and intelligence. Neither life in a convent nor the strictures of time and place could bind Sor Juana's thirst for knowledge or her creativity. As Sally Read notes in her introduction when reading about Sor Juana and her work one has the sense of a woman who pours out poetry as a tight faucet shoots out high-pressure water. The time in which Juana was born and the culture of New Spain were the constricting faucet; her writing was the irrepressible flood.</p><p>Translating Juana's work into English carries a grave risk for it would be far too easy to drown in the flow of imagery music and wit. With her innate sensitivity and deft craft Rhina P. Espaillat is one of the few poets capable of navigating us through the irrepressible flood and safely onto the luxurious shores of Sor Juana's work. This book represents the confluence of two poets each extraordinary in her own right who have joined together over time to create a work that overflows with the enchantments essential to verse-music metaphor and meaning.</p><h4><br></h4><h4>Review:</h4><p>Sor Juana In��s de la Cruz's verse exhibited a mastery of form together with an abundance of serious wit that made it impossible to deny the poet her rightful place in a culture dead set on denying it. Her gifts and skills continue to open minds and to borrow one of her own images to render them opulent by learning. Now the great Rhina P. Espaillat a poet every bit as gifted and skilled as Sor Juana has rendered the nun's deathless poems in all their perfectly measured opulence. An encounter with these sparkling translations will leave readers doubly enriched.</p><p>-BORIS DRALYUK award-winning translator critic and author of <em>My Hollywood and Other Poems</em></p>