Letters So That Happiness by Arnaldo Calveyra and translated by Elizabeth Zuba

This is poetry from Argentina.

Letters So That Happiness by Arnaldo Calveyra translated by Elizabeth Zuba is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Spanish. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781946433053E12.

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.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.