Port Trakl by Jaime Luis Huenún
(translated by Daniel Borzutzky)
2008

"First introduced to a U.S. audience by Cecilia Vicuna in 4 Mapuche Poets, Jaime Luis Huenún has become best-known through Daniel Borzutzky's vivid, memorable translations. In these recent poems--published in 2001 in Chile--Huenún invents a setting influenced by Melville's vivid scenarios, Coleridge's languid morbidity, and George Trakl's silences and darkening seas. Borzutzky's English version is as haunted, brooding, and terrific as the original." --Forrest Gander

Juan Emar, Review of Contemporary
Fiction (This issue of RCF is dedicated
to Daniel Borzutzky's translations of
Chilean fiction writer Juan Emar)
2007

Juan Emar was the literary name of Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi (1893-1964). He was the son of an influential politician and diplomat, and he lived between Santiago and Paris. In Paris, he was associated with surrealist groups, and he took the name Juan Emar because of its connection to the French phrase “J’en ai marre” (I’m fed up). Between 1935-1937, he published four books: Miltín, Un año, Ayer y Diez, which were largely ignored in Chile as he managed to upset the dominant literary circles of his time. In the 1970s, and more recently, his work was reissued in Chile, and he is now thought of as one of the most important 20th century Chilean and South American fiction writers, and seen as a precursor to writers like Julio Cortázar and Juan Rulfo.