Roundness of the Possible - Paperback

by José Enrique Delmonte (Author), Shira Zohara Dickey (Translator)

In dazzling poetic valedictions, Roundness of the Possible explores cosmic evanescence and liminality. José Enrique Delmonte's poems (translated superbly by Shira Zohara Dickey) are extraordinary expressions of embodied consciousness and ecopoetics. In these poems, haunting lines such as "left- handed bees dream of right-handed futures" and "a placid whisper slows down the clocks" remind us to appreciate the beauty of transience and the sublimity of the natural world. -Cassandra Atherton

"Once there was the world / then there was uncertainty" writes José Enrique Delmonte in these cerebral poems translated impeccably by Shira Zohara Dickey. Here, readers are treated to the music of thinking, to poetry about thought, abstractions, essences that never shy too far from the conventional matter of poetry, the stuff of the senses. Hence, this is a very satisfying read appealing both to the philosopher and the sensualist in us.

-Indran Amirthanayagam

In the poem that opens this extraordinary collection of lyrics Delmonte offers a sense of his poetics. "Imminences" proposes not just an inspiritness in the things of the world but also in language, chaos and wonder; hence, throughout his work there is an ease in which image passes into image, abstraction, emotion, and thought. Cosmos, caterpillar, jasmine,"aplausible infinite closeness" and his "roundness of the possible" exist together-exist, perhaps, through each other. You can hear Nerval's sense of unity, here, as well as Lorca's mystery and Alberti's complexities. -Michael Anania