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MAJOR AFRO-BRAZILIAN POET, AND ALEXIS LEVITIN, TRANSLATOR, TO SPEAK NYS Writers Institute, October 2, 2012
PROFILE Translated by Alexis Levitin, Maranhão’s first bilingual collection in English and Portuguese, Blood of the Sun [Sol Sangüíne], will be released in September 2012. Gregory Rabassa, bestselling translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude, called the new translation, “a perfect English rendering of Salgado Maranhão’s deft expression of the tonality of this people and land.” Writing in World Literature Today, Kaitlin Hawkins said that Maranhão’s new work “combines his love of jazz with his love of the written word. In verses that pair socio-political thought with abstract and metaphysical subjects, Maranhão’s lines move with the rhythms inherent to a Brazilian jazz ballad.” Antonio Carlos Secchin, one of Brazil’s preeminent literary scholars, said, “Maranhão has reached the high point of his work (so far)… a speculative intelligence and a celebration of the corporality of the world are expressed with great metaphoric vigor.”
Alexis Levitin, Professor of English at SUNY Plattsburgh, has published more than twenty-five books of translation from Portuguese. His translations have appeared in Partisan Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and hundreds of other literary journals. Earlier translations include Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm (1989), Eugenio de Andrade’s Forbidden Words (2003), and the Ecuadorean poetry anthology Tapestry of the Sun (2009).He is also the author of a travel guide co-written with Gregory Rabassa, Brazil: A Traveler's Literary Companion (2009). For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst. |