Book record
Letters So That Happiness
Arnaldo Calveyra
Translated from Spanish by Elizabeth Zuba
Arnaldo Calveyra's Letters So That Happiness, translated by Elizabeth Zuba, has the intimacy of correspondence and the looseness of thought allowed to move before it has become fully public. Calveyra's poetry often feels rural, philosophical, tender, and slightly displaced, as if memory itself were writing from another country. The letter form suits that condition. It lets the poem address someone while also drifting through landscape, recollection, silence, and desire. Zuba's translation carries a gentle alertness, preserving the sense that happiness here is not a stable possession but something approached through language, relation, and patience. I like the humility of the title. These are not letters of happiness, as though happiness were already secured. They are letters so that happiness might be possible. The book is quiet, but its quiet has a long reach.
- Published
- 2018
- Publisher
- Ugly Duckling Presse
- Language
- Spanish
- Country
- Argentina
- ISBN
- 9781946433053