Venezuelan poet Juan Calzadilla (b. 1931), past recipient of the National Prize in the Visual Arts and the National Prize in Literature, is considered one of the most influential poets of the Spanish language. But while his books have appeared in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spain, his work has not been widely available in English until now. In 1961 Calzadilla was a founding member of El Techo de la Ballena (The Roof of the Whale), an avant-garde collective that sought to fuse politics and aesthetics. He published three books of poetry under its umbrella—
Dictated by the Pack
(1962),
Bad Manners
(1965), and
The Supernatural
Contradictions
(1967)—which are all presented here in an omnibus edition, masterfully translated by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott. Decades later, these poems still resonate, profoundly illustrating a sense of entrapment, of societal pressures on the individual, and of steadfast refusal to give in. Suffused with surrealist imagery, exuberant, exciting, and unexpected,
The Roof of the Whale Poems
is a breathtaking collection.
The main occupation we have given this prisoner is to force him to restlessly pace around what on closer inspection turns out to be a labyrinth whose inside space exactly matches the convulsions of his brain A convicted man we have put to death . . . —Excerpt from “The Prisoner of His Conscience”