Poetry. Latinx Studies. Translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval. NIGHT IN THE NORTH is an autobiographical long poem that chronicles the author's experience growing up in Artigas, Uruguay, a linguistic and cultural borderland nestled between Brazil and Argentina. In a series of stark scenes, Severo revisits moments from his childhood--sketching a rare map of the subtle, yet violent, mechanisms that marginalize culturally specific communities. A luminous meditation on poverty and imaginative possibility.
The speaker of Fabián Severo's remarkable book narrates the struggles of a life lived in a provincial town in Uruguay, but it is not the hardships that a reader will remember, but the hopes, the tender interiority, the intimate knowledge of a place this remarkable poet de-scribes. Rendered in precise and elegant English by Eglin and Kercheval, this book will be a revelation to American readers as it introduces a voice on uncommon clarity and sensitivity, both retrospective and pinned to a hopeful future, from a poet of great expressive gifts.--Mark Wunderlich
'Life is like that / the less you have / the more you dream, ' Fabián Severo's whimsical yet somber, realistic, and tireless narrator states. Written from a place called Artigas, border terrain not possessed by the people who inhabit it, in a language that 'flies loose and free through the sky, ' these poems, so adeptly translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval, address troubles of poverty, displacement, and abuse in surprisingly simple yet forceful, elegant language. I too wonder 'if God exists / and we are all his children / how can there be a place you're not allowed in?'--Curtis Bauer
'María always tells the same story, / and her face becomes so happy / that one is filled with sadness.' Such are the many-layered emotional resonances in Fabián Severo's astonishing collection NIGHT IN THE NORTH, which follows the narrator as he records memories of daily life in a small border town in Uruguay. I am in awe of the tender intimacy Severo captures between people living through and into poverty and hardship, in the small tokens that illuminate both sorrow and richness. In sharp and precise language, Laura Cesarco Eglin and Jesse Lee Kercheval bring a much-needed voice into American literature.--Lauren Shapiro
