Conversions / Carlos Gómez Carro
The poems in Conversions are a tribute to the best poetry written in Spanish. The Golden Age beats in their verses. “Woman is the best of man, / and it is madness to say she is the worst,” said Lope de Vega. Gómez Carro, in a subtle dialogue with tradition, rewrites that discovery for us: “Every woman is something of a femme fatale. […] She is the bearer of life and death.”
Life, with its pleasures, and death, with its inescapable sentence, are some of the concerns uncovered in this book. Poetry, however, is one of the pillars of these pages. The verses gathered in this volume travel through our poetic tradition, returning to the past to reinvent it. That is what the poet does. That is also his mission. And Gómez Carro has fulfilled it. —Hiram Barrios
Conversions is the thirty-second title of Darklight's Bridges bilingual poetry series. It was translated from Spanish into English by the poets Roberto Mendoza Ayala (MEX) and Arthur Gatti (USA). It has a foreword by the Mexican writer Hiram Barrios and a beautiful cover design and interior illustrations by the graphic artist Luis Alanís.
