Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems

"Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems" is an important volume by Juan Gelman of Argentina. This collection has been edited and translated into English by Joan Lindgren, and features a foreword by Eduardo Galeano.Gelman spent time in exile during a period of Argentine military dictatorship; his son and daughter-in-law disappeared under the dictatorship. Much of this book deals with these painful realities. The book includes a helpful chronology of the Argentine turmoil from 1966-95. Unfortunately, this is an English-only edition; I would have preferred a bilingual edition.Many of Gelman's poems are dark and mournful. This is understandable, since many of them deal with such subjects as exile, torture, and assassination. There are also poems about love, and about poetry itself. I was especially moved by his series of prose poems that explore the psychological landscape of the exile. He writes, "I am a monstrous plant. My roots are thousands of miles from me and no stem connects us" (from "Under Foreign Rain" XVI).This is a haunting and powerful volume. I highly recommend this book to those interested in Latin American poetry, literature of exile, and human rights.

Even in translation (although I wish this were a dual language book) a very distinctive use of repetition and very tight construction shines through. I would call the work less "political poetry" than "poetry of human relationships that have a political context". Even poems of anguish regarding the Argentine "disappeared", have a universality rather than a stridentcy. The poems include exquisite turns of phrase that make reading it a pleasure of waiting for the next magnificant phrase.