Poetry: Calculations by Brenda Cárdenas

by Silvia Duarte  /  July 14, 2011  / No comments



Brenda Cárdenas’ poetry works itself into the folds of overlapping worlds: Spanish and English intermingle with ideas of childhood and adulthood, song and poem, and day and night. Her topics, in the midst of transition, maintain individuality within the patterns of a collective. Words push and pull in a delicate dance; their hard, stand-alone meanings (fear, zigzag, zero) are tempered with lilting, soothing rhythms, like a provocative duende mixed with mother’s lullaby.

In Boomerang, her recently released collection from Bilingual Press, Cárdenas uses this form to obscure the constancies that define our every-day world.

“Calculations” from Boomerang by Brenda Cárdenas, copyright (c) 2009 by Bilingual Press. Used by permission from Bilingual Review Press, Tempe, Arizona.

Read Sampsonia Way’s interview with BrendaCárdenas here.

CLICK HERE to buy a copy of Boomerang.

About the Author

Silvia Duarte is the managing editor of Sampsonia Way. She received her degree in Communication Sciences from Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala and her masters in Latin American studies from the Autonomous University of Madrid in Spain. Duarte was editor of El Periódico de Guatemala’s Sunday magazine from 2001 to 2006 and has written scholarly and journalistic articles in Germany, Spain, and the United States. She came to Pittsburgh in 2007 with her partner writer-in-exile Horacio Castellanos.

View all articles by Silvia Duarte

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