I need a pair of eyeballs to look at a translation I did during my sabbatical. It's 70 very short poems. I don't need someone to compare it with the original and look for mistakes (I have others who can do that), but someone to look at it with fresh eyes. I'm sending selections to magazines (with no great luck so far). Part of the problem is that the poets are unknown, so the poems really have to speak for themselves to someone who doesn't necessarily know Spanish. That is, I can't just say, "here, look at these Neruda translations, where the value of Neruda is assured and the only question is the quality of the translations.

Some background to pique your interest. The book was written by Lola Velasco and Amalia Iglesias in close collaboration. You can't tell who wrote what. Amalia had cancer at the time (now in remission) and it is in some sense "about" this experience, although the style is elilptical enough that this "thematic" content is not at all intrusive. (Like Jordan, I tend to not like books organized around "concepts" in a tedious way.) This is not that kind of book. Also, it might be relevant to note that, although written by Lesbians, it doesn't seem to demand any particular biographical knowledge on the part of the reader. It is poetry of such radiant "purity" that anything "extraneous" seems beside the point.

I think its appeal is not confined to the avant-garde type of reader. In fact, it might not even appeal to such a reader at all, for all I know. If you are interested in giving me some advice on this manuscript, let me know by b.c: jmayhew@ku.edu. I have some shorter clusters that you can look at if you don't want to see the whole thing.