The Law of Conservation

Argentine poet Mariana Spada’s debut collection, which originally appeared in Spanish, situates speakers in verdant surroundings, brightly evocative of sultry summer afternoons:

[…] pervasive emerald
of soy and sunflowers
transpiring in precisely
surveyed patches 
adjourned every so often
by slopes of espinillos.

Spada, a transgender woman, delivers her sardonic takes on the performance of “feminine ritual[s]” such as the routine application of overnight moisturizer: “if you don’t let it / saturate the skin / it’s all in vain.” In “Return,” the poet depicts, with a breezy levity, seaside sartorial decisions: “you went down to the beach to say goodbye / to the part of the wardrobe / you’d later abandon / under the bed in the bungalow.” Robin Myers’s English translations are acoustically rich; in “The Sky Is Falling in Chamartín,” Myers preserves a persistent sibilance while shifting through the letter o’s vocalic range:

I didn’t even notice
that my coffee had gone cold
as I waited for the midsummer
storm to end,
sorting the notes
I took at the museum
for a stillborn poem.

Throughout this collection, Spada examines and reworks popular axioms. The book’s title poem draws evening precipitation from an ancient source into an intimate moment: 

[…] all the gentle rain
that once compressed the sand
along the banks of Ilion
traces itself onto the glass
tonight.

 “Archimedes’ Principle” posits the volume displaced by a naked body in a bathtub:

the part that hates itself
and the part you can live with
have the same mass
and it could float
or sink […]

And, in “String Theory,” a concept famous for its elegant complexity turns out not to be so complicated after all:

It’s simple: every body
vibrates in a different
way: a string
sometimes pulled taut
and sometimes
slack
and sometimes
sounding the right
note, a gift