Gervitz, Gloria: Migrations: Poem, 1976-2020

Translated by Mark Schafer (New York Review Books, paperback)

Publication Date: November 2, 2021

Publisher Marketing: An epic, single-poem tribute to the spirit of women, this is the first complete and final translation of the great Mexican poet's magnum opus. 

Forty-three years in the making, Migrations is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of modern Mexican literature. Gervitz's book is an epic journey in free verse through the individual and collective memories of Jewish women emigrants from Eastern Europe, a conversation that ranges across two thousand years of poetry, a bridge that spans the oracles of ancient Greece and the markets of modern Mexico, a prayer that blends the Jewish and Catholic liturgies, a Mexican woman's reclamation through poetry of her own voice and erotic power. Gervitz's work has been compared to the works of Whitman, Eliot, Pound, and Guillén. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and translator Forrest Gander has called Migrations "one of the great poems of the 21st century."

Mark Schafer's pioneering translation of Gervitz's lifework is a poetic feat in its own right.