Sor Juana and Other Monsters

Poetry. Women's Studies. Translated from the Spanish by John Pluecker. In seventeenth century, colonial-era Mexico, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's visionary and passionate verse assured her a seminal place in the literary canon. Luis Felipe Fabre has reimagined this mysterious figure, so often appropriated and dissected by academics and literati. Fabre's poems are built out of sixteenth century octosyllabic tetrameter and pulp novels, out of horror movie trailers and pompous academic papers, out of Medusas and dreams, Bat Sisters and rhymes. But more than that, they are made of language, a language brimming with irony, black humor and dread as he reflects on the many transformations of Sor Juana and of Mexico itself. "As a conduit for future translations of this caliber, Señal is a sign of hope for English readers... Fabre's poems likely approach the pinnacle of such an endeavor."—Matt Bucher, Molossus