Shearsman NEWS

These titles have been in preparation for what seems like a long time, but, finally, I'm confident enough to announce that Adverse Winds (Vientos contrarios, 1926) will appear in September 2023; Satyr, or The Power of Words (Sátiro, o el poder de palabras, 1939) will appear in October 2023; and, Seeing and Touching (Ver y palpar, 1941) will at long last appear in November. The first two are already with the printer, and I'm sure the final volume will get there in time for publication in November.

These books have taken a long time to come to fruition, Adverse Winds being some 2 years late, and Seeing and Touching perhaps 18 months late. They've been tough to get right (or right enough ). I was unsure about publishing Satyr in this series at all, until I realised that my version was quite presentable, and that the book's links to the rest of the author's work made it a good thing to include. I've played around with translations of some of the other prose volumes by Huidobro, especially Papa, o el diario de Alicia Mir (1934), but that has so far resisted completion and is of more biographical, than literary interest.

With these three volumes almost ready to face the world, I will be returning to try to complete work on Last Poems (1948), which contains some very important poems. I'm adding the author's final interview to that volume too. I'd like to get the Painted Poems out in 2024 also, but it depends on whether I can obtain some extra images, and, crucially, permissions. A version of the book already exists, but I would like it to be more comprehensive. The final volume currently in the draft stage—and it's at a very early stage—is the Uncollected Poems , mopping up all the author's occasional and political verses. I've tended to work on these books concurrently, moving onto another when I get too bogged down with one of them. I find that time away, and engagement with other works by the same author, helps the process.

The keen observer of this series will note that Altazor has not been included—by common consent the author's magnum opus. That's because it has defeated me completely. Well, about 8 pages of it have defeated me, and there's no solution in sight. I may see if someone else can take it on, but, in any event, Eliot Weinberger's magisterial version is already available from Wesleyan University Press, and WUP seems disposed to keeping it print.


Tony Frazer