WHITE PINE PRESS
an independent literary publisher
The Jacarandas Whisper - Alberto Ruy Sanchez - translated by Rhonda Buchanan - $19.00 - ISBN 978-1-945680-84-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2024952453
In The Jacarandas Whisper, Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez pays homage to the amazing jacaranda trees that transform Mexico City into a purple spectacle heralding the arrival of spring.
Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez adds yet another “secret garden” to his opus of wonder, this time focusing his attention on the jacaranda trees that transform Mexico City into a purple spectacle heralding the arrival of spring.
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The book is carefully structured into six sections of lyrical poems t 978-1-945680-84-7 hat reflect upon the paradoxical nature of the jacaranda trees, their immortal yet transient character, their origin myths, their multicultural history of migration, and the lessons they offer on the human condition. The book closes with a final “Resounding Coda” that celebrates the jacaranda’s power of communication: “She whispers things when silent, / and says even more if you listen.”
“Alberto Ruy-Sánchez’ The Jacarandas Whisper is a sumptuous paean to the jacaranda trees whose blossoms transform Mexico City every Spring. “They tell a thousand stories to the wind,/ of loves, losses, and sorrows.” The poet translates the jacarandas’ speech, describes their flowers, and tells of the effects on their viewers: “As we listen to her, as we see and feel her,/ each of us recovers, perhaps, something lost or forgotten.” His longtime translator, Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, skillfully brings over into English the many kinds of poems here, ensuring that we, too, feel the magic worked by these striking purple blooms, and are able fully to enjoy in our own language the beauty and surprise of the poet’s secret understanding of the links between our own lives and these flowers, all across their lifespans: “For each flower on the branch,/ a promise, a desire…For each flower on the ground,/ an intimate exchange/ ends with a smile.”
—Carolyn Tipton
“Shifting clouds in heaven’s eye, the jacarandas are whispering strokes of calligraphy on the page of desire. In this book, the poet listens to them speak, alone or in unison, watches them dance, pursues their fragrant metamorphoses, hears in their music the memory of migrations, and interprets their messages with lucidity. This is an intimate book that inspires a collective utopia: a yearning transformed into the engagement of a city worthy of its jacarandas. A seminal book for its readers.”
— Aurelio Asiain
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“This book invites us to pause and contemplate the trees, the sky, the wind, the ground and the roots below, and to consider the rhythm of words, our embraces, desire, and the purity of poetry.”
— Sandra Lorenzano
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“This volume describes the jacaranda trees of Mexico City – their beauty, their history, their biological features, and the long list of literary admirers—as a point of departure for meditating on nothing less than the human condition.’
—Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez
Rhonda Dahl Buchanan, Professor Emerita of Spanish at the University of Louisville, has translated fiction by authors from Latin America and Spain. She received an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2006 for the translation of the Mexican writer Alberto Ruy Sánchez’s novel Los jardines secretos de Mogador. Her translations of Ruy Sánchez’s novels The Secret Gardens of Mogador: Voices of the Earth and Poetics of Wonder: Passage to Mogador were published by White Pine Press. Her other published translations include works by the Argentine authors Mempo Giardinelli, Tununa Mercado, Ana María Shua, and Perla Suez, and the Spanish poet Fernando Operé.
Alberto Ruy-Sánchez is an award-winning writer and editor who has authored thirty-two books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His works have been translated into fifteen languages. He has received international acclaim for Quinteto de Mogador, a series of five novels that explore the many facets of desire while extending a cultural bridge between his native Mexico and Morocco. His previously translated works in English include The Secret Gardens of Mogador: Voices of the Earth and The Poetics of Wonder.