Jeannette L. Clariond is a poet, translator, and editor. Her published collections of poetry include Mujer dando la espalda (finalist for the Ramón López Velarde National Poetry Prize, 1992); Desierta memoria (winner of the Efraín Huerta National Poetry Prize, 1996); Todo antes de la noche (winner of the Gonzalo Rojas National Poetry Prize, 2001); Leve sangre, Marzo 10, NY (performed in Madrid using dance and music); 7 visiones (with Gonzalo Rojas); and the retrospective anthology Astillada claridad (UANL, 2014). She is also the author of the prose memoir Cuaderno de Chihuahua (Fondo de Cultura Económica). In 2003, Clariond founded the publishing house Vaso Roto Ediciones, which she has directed since then. She was awarded a Fundación Rockefeller-Conaculta grant in 2004 for her translation of Charles Wright’s Black Zodiac, a BANFF Translators Grant in 2004 for The School of Wallace Stevens: A Profile of North American Poetry (co-edited with critic Harold Bloom), and recognition from the Italian Institute for Culture in 2008 for her translations of the poet Alda Merini. For her poetry and her contributions to translation and culture, she was awarded the Juan de Mairena Prize by the University of Guadalajara in 2014.
from the article:
In Waters of Darkness
Breaking ship and shore it plunges deep. Giving of itself what the self is unable to give. Shipwrecked heart: you unleash storm clouds and you drag drown bleakly the High Heavens.
Cihuateteo¹
Her body’s indigo flakes away but red remains the cinnabar of her headdress, mineral wax on her eyelids, a serpent coiled around her waist, a resin brazier, her half-open lips …desire still remains.
¹Nahuatl word meaning “Divine Women.” In Aztec mythology, the souls of women who died in childbirth became these spirits who accompanied the setting sun.