Roffé, Mercedes: Ghost Opera

Ghost Opera by Mercedes Roffé. Translated from the Spanish by Judith Filc (co-im-press, paperback)

Publication Date: October 6, 2017

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Music. In the stunning collection GHOST OPERA, Mercedes Roffé, one of the most esteemed contemporary poets of Latin America, reminds us that poetry's true origin is the stillness that precedes song. Sharing its title and impulse toward the ritualistic with Chinese composer Tan Dun's 1994 piece for string quartet, Roffé's GHOST OPERA expands outward, using forms and constraints to explore language through a multifaceted lens. Roffé presents us with an opus of diverse allusions, textures, and intertextualities—from Bach, Schoenberg, and Shakespeare to painting and Artaud's concept of ritual—all infused with an awareness of history and anthropology through which Roffé conducts her polyphonic fugue of image and lyric. Translator Judith Filc expertly recasts these poems into English, creating an elemental music that transcends the bonds of language's capacity to mean by reaching toward more etheric realms.

"There are no poems I crave more than Mercedes Roffé's. In the original Spanish and Judith Filc's exquisite English translation, GHOST OPERA is song, fugue, dream, drama, prayer, oracle, and memory. Doing what ancient poetry used to do—what poetry still ought to do—Roffé's poems 'open the gates of Sleep' and waken the dying soul. Roffé's work is widely read in her native Argentina and throughout the Spanish-speaking world. North Americans need her voice, too, perhaps more than we know. We're incredibly fortunate to have this brilliant bilingual collection."—Janet Kaplan