Ana Rossetti is one of the most notable voices in contemporary Spanish literature. She began her literary career in the late seventies, soon after dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975. With her first prize-winning poetry collection published in 1980, she became prominent among the many women poets who used the lifting of censorship to produce a fresh, often daring, body of poetry. She has been anthologized in all major contemporary Spanish poetry volumes and is a familiar face in poetry workshops in Spain and in the United States. The winner of several national literary awards, Rossetti’s writing has also ventured quite successfully into short narrative, theater, opera, and children’s literature. Incessant Beauty, A Bilingual Anthology, edited and translated by Carmela Ferradáns, offers to the English audiences a first glimpse into Ms. Rossetti’s eclectic and voracious symbolic universe. Below is perhaps one of her most well-known signature poems, “Calvin Klein’s Underdrawers.” The print edition is available on Amazon.com; eBook is now available at Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and Google Play. iTunes and 2LP Bookshop coming soon!
CALVIN KLEIN, UNDERDRAWERS
Fuera yo como nevada arena
alrededor de un lirio,
hoja de acanto, de tu vientre horma,
o fl or de algodonero que en su nube ocultara
el más severo mármol Travertino.
Suave estuche de tela, moldura de caricias,
fuera yo, y en tu joven turgencia
me tensara.
Fuera yo tu cintura,
fuera el abismo oculto de tus ingles,
redondos capiteles para tus muslos fuera,
fuera yo, Calvin Klein.
CALVIN KLEIN, UNDERDRAWERS
Would that I were like snowy sand
surrounding a lily,
an acanthus leaf, molded to your belly
or a cotton flower that would hide in its cloud
the hardest Travertine marble.
Soft sheath of cloth, moulding of caresses,
would that I were, and around your young turgescence
I would make myself taut.
Would that I were your waist,
would that I were the hidden abyss of your groin,
round capitals for your thighs would that I were.
Would that I were, Calvin Klein.
TRANSLATED BY CARMELA FERRADÁNS
