Book record
What’s in a Name
Ana Luísa Amaral
Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
What's in a Name, by Ana Luísa Amaral, is a Portuguese poetry collection from Portugal, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, published by New Directions in 2019. It is a Portuguese collection by Ana Luísa Amaral drawn toward naming, identity, and the intimacy of address. The poems understand that names are never small; they carry gender, inheritance, love, grammar, and power. I would read it first for the pressure of the translated line rather than as a puzzle waiting for its correct answer. The best version of a description for a book like this should give the reader a door, not a lecture: a little context, then permission to meet the poem through image, cadence, and affect. For this library, the book matters as more than a representative entry from Portugal. It shows how poetry in translation can carry local weather, private intensity, and literary history into English without becoming merely informational.
- Published
- 2019
- Publisher
- New Directions
- Language
- Portuguese
- Country
- Portugal
- ISBN
- 9780811228329