The Art of Keeping Quiet

By Rodolfo Alonso

The Art of Keeping Quiet is the first anthology in English translation by Rodolfo Alonso, one of today's most renowned Argentine poets. As early as 1956, Ra l Gustavo Aguirre noted in Alonso "a surprising verbal command, where the conquests of modern poetry meld into the terrain of language, while still respecting the structure and spirit of quotidian expression." Fifty years later, Juan Gelman praised "this crystalline voice that has celebrated existence, giving its expression an essential structure like an expanding spiral. Beauty turns these poems into music; they're engraved with a formal, imaginative, and conceptual rigor that is exceptional." Alonso's poetry is, in short, a radical questioning of solipsism, an exemplary search for the other. A poetry aware of itself, its reaches and limits, always seeking to be reinvented. A poetry that serenely unites aesthetic commitment and the social vanguard.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1784630330
• ISBN13: 9781784630331
• Release Date: October 2015
• Publisher: Salt Publishing
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Rodolfo Alonso: Longing For Transcendence

RODOLFO ALONSO: LONGING FOR TRANSCENDENCE Rodolfo Alonso is a virtuoso whose instrument of choice happens to be the word. Anthologies of his poetry have appeared throughout the world and his work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, and Galician. Ironically, The Art of Keeping Quiet is the first of his books or collections to appear in English!!! Juan Gelman, another legendary Argentine poet, succinctly described Alonso’s poetry: “Beauty turns these poems into music.” Music is an integral component of Alonso’s very being. Adam Shatz, in a remarkable recent essay on the ecstatic minimalism of jazz innovator Mal Waldron, characterized Waldron’s work as an attempt to chase “down that single, elusive note, as if his life depended on it.” This search “spoke of survival, rebirth, and the longing for transcendence.” These same words apply equally to the hypnotic beauty in the poetry of Rodolfo Alonso---Rodolfo Alonso the poet seeking the elusive note… If you plan to read only one book of poetry, or translated poetry this year, make that book The Art of Keeping Quiet. Additionally, be watchful for the appearance of more English translations of the singularly beautiful poetry of Rodolfo Alonso.