Writers and Editors
Mini-review by Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies
Growing up as a young Catholic girl, I had crushes on the women saints. I admit my favorite was St. Teresa, the “other” St. Teresa, “the Little Flower,” as she was known. She was a more sentimental character: so young and pretty and devoted to her faith. But as I grew up and embraced my own calling as a writer, it was St. Teresa of Avila, who captured my imagination. She was a writer, a woman of passion and profound faith navigating a male-centric structure. Whenever any of us girls in the extended family were troubled or confused, my tía Rosa, a very devoted Catholic, would stroke our foreheads and recite—actually sing, “Nada te turbe,” a lovely poem-prayer I thought tía had made up. Come to find out, she was quoting Santa Teresa de Ávila.
That was the only verse I knew by this impressive woman, writer, mystic and visionary. Since I’m English dominant, whenever I read translations of her work, the results were often off-putting, clunky, the language dated, the contortions to fit a rhyme scheme or form and be faithful to the original text were misguided and lost their power. I never felt drawn to read more.
What a gift then to read Dana Delibovi’s translations of St Teresa of Ávila’s complete poems—sweet treasure!—so elegant and concise, the language lyrical yet simple and accessible, the music of the stanzas and the profundity of her voice carried into English. I also appreciated Delibovi’s curation: the short introductions and thematic arrangement of the poems—nothing overly ponderous and academic. It’s as if we are on a pilgrimage into the heart and soul and song of this amazing woman and spiritual leader and poet.
Thank you and gracias to Dana Delibovi for bringing her work to English readers. We owe her a deep bow of gratitude!
—Julia Alvarez, winner of the National Medal of the Arts
A gorgeous collection. Dana Delibovi’s translations and the essays that accompany them are thoughtful, inviting, insightful, and rich. Through them, Saint Teresa’s passionate words pierce through the page and bloom beautifully in the reader’s mind – and heart. Lovers of her poems will return to this book again and again.
—Randon Billings Noble, author of Be with Me Always: Essays and editor of A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays
Dana Delibovi writes in her very informative introduction to Sweet Hunter that “the mystical and the practical, as different as they seem, are elided in Teresa’s work, because both involve concrete experiences, not abstract concepts.” In her important translation of St. Teresa’s complete poetry, Delibovi remarkably demonstrates the entwined presence of these two tendencies in her concrete, accurate and stunning versions. Saint Teresa has, at last, found an English translator who has deeply penetrated the poet’s essence, her revelatory reverence and rapturous beauty.
—Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno, poet, essayist and translator, author of Night Suite, Remission, and A Continual Pilgrimage: American Writers in Paris, 1944-1960
If, as Joseph Brodsky once declared, the translator of poetry is a rival to the original poet, then Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila finds poet, critic, and translator Dana Delibovi answering the challenge with full commitment. The rivalry here, however, is not one of competing techniques. Rather, poem by poem, Delibovi renders Ávila’s vision with a clarity faithful to the original but which works in tones and nuances that speak to our contemporary moment. This tension across language and time presents parallel efforts and passions. Delibovi’s notes which accompany each poem add further depth and provide a running commentary where Delibovi’s own voice mixes with that of previous translators, ultimately creating a lively meditation filled with insightful details from Ávila’s life and practice. This layered approach is apt in engaging with the work of a mystic, work shaped by urgency and faith as much as craft. What Delibovi has gifted us is much more than a selection of poems: it’s a wholly distinct poetic journey.
—José Angel Araguz, author of Rotura and Ruin & Want
The power and fluidity of Dana Delibovi’s superb translations spark the poems of St. Teresa of Avila into the 21st century. Sassy and ebullient (especially in her advice to her convent sisters) yet profoundly spiritual, Teresa has found an ideal translator in poet Delibovi, who holds the seeming contradictions of St. Teresa’s mystical yet physical nature in her capable hands. Sensuous yet strict, feminist yet practical, Teresa navigated a sexist, hierarchical world with brilliance. Delibovi found herself both connected and inspired as she read, re-read, and began translating these poems, then organizing them for the contemporary reader into Sweet Hunter: The Poems of St. Teresa of Avila. The Delibovi translation opens a shining portal to poems that are fresh and electric today.
—Molly Peacock, author of The Widow’s Crayon Box: Poems
Dana Delibovi’s luminous translations of St. Teresa’s poetry are as imaginative as they are faithful, deftly balancing the mystical with the pragmatic, the exuberant with the introspective, the sensual with the soulful. Passionate, visceral, yet warmly conversational, these stunning translations reunite us with our own yearnings even as they introduce us, with great depth and musicality, to St. Teresa’s pathbreaking poetry.
—Nandana Dev Sen—Author, actor, activist. Translator of Acrobat: Poems by Nabaneeta Dev Sen
Dana Delibovi’s new English translation of the poems of Saint Teresa of Ávila provides the reader not only with an occasion to contemplate through Teresa’s vision the meaning of Christ on the Cross, but also to become a carillo, one of Teresa’s dear addressees in the poems, feeling through her voice an intimacy with the divine and, therefore, achieving a kind of mysticism—a mysticism that leads the reader to the ultimate goal of Teresa’s art—that we not fear death.
—Mary Ann B. Miller, editor-in-chief of Presence Journal and professor of English, Caldwell University
The immediacy of these new translations is such that the prayers, dialogues, and instructions of Saint Teresa of Ávila read as if they already resided, unuttered, in our minds. Dana Delibovi’s rendering of these works—by turns mystical, sensual, and practical—removes all sense of distance between Teresa’s life and our own, permitting her voice to resonate with an astonishing intimacy. This fusion of the idiom of Catholic faith with the manifest language of a poet’s soul stands as a revelation unto itself.
—Eric Darton, author of Free City and Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York’s World Trade Center
Readers
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