Reading at NOPF

Esteban Quispe and I read from our translation of The Equestrian Turtle at the New Orleans Poetry Festival on April 12, 2025.

“When you appear the air is immobilized and cruelty armed to the teeth becomes adorable like the plumage of the millenarian birds reflected in your eyes.”

This is a line from “Archaic Reflections on Love,” and I’ve already corrected the translation—or it has already evolved. So may this one, from “The Scandalous Life of César Moro:”

“When the seething ballerinas are at the point of being beheaded / And man grows pale in terrible suspicion of the definitive apparition carrying between his teeth the legible oracle…”

I am planning a new Moro translation project, from his collections Le château de grisou (Firedamp Castle) and Pierre des soleils (Sunstone), and his writings on poetry and art including the essays collected in Los anteojos de azufre (The Sulphur Eyeglasses).