Bøger af Cyrus Cassells

"Cyrus Cassells, a masterful poet and translator, has created a unique and powerful hybrid translation/poetic homage to Catalunya's great twentieth-century poet Salvador Espriu. The lion's share of To the Cypress Again and Again is a supple translation of Espriu's first book, Sinera Cemetery, along with selections from other collections. A reader will come away with a poignant sense of Espriu's beloved seaside landscape as well as, in Espriu's words, his "precious Catalan's/ mysterious gold" a language that was suppressed and forbidden under Franco's regime. Cassells has given us an enduring gift to the memory of Espriu-through his personal introduction, his loving translations, followed by his own Espriu-inspired poems that evoke "an alphabet of cypresses and sea-light," thus transmuting Espriu's elegiac voice into Cassells's own." -Sharon Dolin"At this particular darkening hour in Europe, we are graced by Cyrus Cassells's homage to Salvador Espriu. A survivor of Spain's civil war, who then became an internal émigré, Espriu intimately knew the cost of war and destruction. In exquisite, moving poems such as Sinera Cemetery, masterfully rendered by Cassells, we encounter Espriu's grieved, but resolute, fortitude: 'Liberty, the enduring word I utter time and again/between ancient boundaries/of vineyards and the sea.' Cassells's dialogue with Espriu is a gift, an enactment of the sacred pledge to uphold, against all odds, the 'enduring word.'" -Ellen Hinsey, author of The Illegal Age and Update on the Descent"To the Cypress Again and Again: Tribute to Salvador Espriu is a triumph of affinities, a testament to a translator's steady, slow-burning attention to a poet's work-and to the rich metamorphoses sparked by such devotion. These charged, luminous translations exalt Espriu's stark lyrics; not just accompanying but also communicating with them, Cassells's own poems are contemplative and ecstatic. Every translation is a conversation, and I'm grateful for this book as an example of both how and why." -Robin Myers, translator of Copy by Dolores Dorantes and Another Life by Daniel Lipara"Cyrus Cassells has translated more than the words of Salvador Espriu, a Catalan poet who survived what Franco wanted to bury. His translation brings a culture, a time, and an honoring of the duende that gave inner life to a 'sacramental duty' of bringing Espriu to the English language and the world poetic psyche. His own poems inspired by Espriu: 'I became all poetry, / all silence and verse--' are, I might say, transfigurations of exile in a native land. This book is masterful and rare in its beauty. A must read for all that value freedom and the everlasting life of a cypress." -Lisha Adela García, Literary translator and author of Blood Rivers and A Rope of Luna

"Is There Room for Another Horse on Your Horse Ranch? Cyrus Cassells Four Way Books 2024"--

A tribute to the Catalan poet Salvador Espriu, consisting of translations of Espriu's poetry, commentary, and poems inspired by his work.

In the aftermath of the Stand Your Ground killing of his close friend's father, poet Cassells explores, in his most fearless book to date, the brutality, bigotry, and betrayal at the heart of current America. Taking his cue from the Civil Rights and Vietnam War era poets and songwriters who inspired him in his youth, Cassells presents The World That the Shooter Left Us, a frank, bulletin-fierce indictment of unraveling democracy in an embattled America, in a world still haunted by slavery, by Guernica, Hiroshima, and the Holocaust, by climate catastrophe, by countless battles, borders, and broken promises--adding new grit, fire, and luster to his forty-year career as a dedicated and vital American poet.

A lyrical "book of heroes" about the role of art, creation, and inspiration.

Soul Make a Path Through Shouting is Cyrus Cassells' second book. His first, The Mud Actor, was selected for the National Poetry Series by Al Young in 1982. Enriched both mythologically and experientially by world travels, Cassells makes the vital journey inward, a search for spiritual grace among "hen feathers, rubble, shards of broken dolls" in Afghanistan or among the vantage-points of the Pyrenees. He draws with equal ease from classical Greek mythology and experientially by his world travels, oral traditions, and others, and the result is an often hypnotic and rhapsodic interweaving of dramatic narratives forming a single whole. He celebrates the dignity and courage of a girl on her way to school in 1957, knowing as only an authentic poet can, that this is the real history, the real and necessary song of a world. Soul Make a Path Through Shouting is a virtuoso performance.

A reissuing of The Mud Actor, the debut collection of poetry by Cyrus Cassells.

Cyrus Cassells' vibrant translations grow on the page as though the essence of Francesc Parcerisas' work has also moved forward in a Janus-like fashion. These translations are not simply the same poems in a different language; Cassells has crafted new poetry.