Susana Thénon (Argentina) 1937-1991

Susana Thénon (Argentina)

1937-1991

 

Born in 1937, Argentine poet Susana Thénon was also a translator and artistic photographer. Her early collections, Edad sin tregua (1958), Habitante de la nada (1959), and De lugares extraños, contained references to Biblical and classical themes.

    Influenced by the Italian I Novissmi poets and by figures such as the Brazilian poets Carlos Drummond de Andrade and Manuel Bandeira, as well as others, Thénon broke with her previous work in her 1984 collection, distancias. In this work Thénon pushed her spare and terse style further than previously, and explored a work, as she put it, in which she "entered a strange zone from which it would be difficult to return." In 1987 she continued that work in ova completa, and in other works, Ensayo general and papyrus, incomplete at the time of her 1991 death.

     In 1988 her book Acerca de Iris Scaccheri was published in Buenos Aires by Ediciones Anzilotti.

 

BOOKS OF POETRY

 

Edad sin tregua (Buenos Aires: Cooperativa Impresora y Distribuidora, 1958); Habitante de la nada (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Thiriel, 1959); De lugares extraños (Buenos Aires: Carmina, 1967); distancias (Buenos Aires: Torres Agüero Editor, 1984); ova completa (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1987)

 

ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATIONS

 

distancias / distances, trans. by Renata Treitel (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994); Ova Completa, trans. by Rebekah Smith (Brooklyn, Ugly Duckling Press, 2021).

 

For an interview with Thénon, go here: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/done-up-chaos-susana-th%C3%A9non-interviewed/

For another selection of poems, go here: https://www.aperfectvacuum.club/susana-thenon

 

 

from distancias

 

1

 

 

the wheel has stopped stop-

two three two three two the wheel

has stopped broken inside

only wood eyes enter

only memory conic

only memory face to the sky it is not possible

that she should still burn more should burn still more

burn alone eternal as if the wind (something)

would not scatter her crumbs her clothes undone

desired body light of the night birds

homicides under the bridge go away cold

(something) in cadence sea

and it whistled and said creature mud

said and laughed trumpet of vein

laughed aimed trembled flesh

and fired bundle

shoes

flesh

ethereal (something)

and sun (a woman)

hatchets of sun (before the locked door)

scratch the door (looks for her key) it clears

her chest (says in a loud voice) her eye (open to me i) her hand

(calls calls) the edge (no) of the river (no) of blood

(no) of blood that runs away wild thread black with fear

between threshold and door meeting her steps

the wheel has stopped stop-

two three two three two the wheel

has stopped

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

4

 

there's a country (but not mine)

where night is only in the afternoon

(but not ours)

and thus sings a star its free time

 

throughout death i will think

since dying is not mine

and I still shine with dazzled blood

(there's a country) the dream of falling

(there's a country)

and i with myself (and always)

with love unmoved

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

 

6

 

the great snake that embraces the world

sleeps you too sleep

i sleep pure of sound

we smile against the desperate and alone

among the flowers no

(you can) no (you cannot) and of the day

it rains shadow dawned you tremble with

death prior to death

i sleep a stranger to the map of the seas here i read

your dream no longer here i read

your wolf-laughter white language i decipher

no (you cannot on)

and now

the drop falls (drink love)

with a whole sky of packed madness

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

 

 

12

 

oedipus

 

 

the embrace the embrace in the afternoon

how immortal i have been

and how little the alien future hurts

this stone without rest you were eternal still

you were the last the first the nothing

and nothing but sun your glance my blindness

sun forever yesterday and we turned night

and the embrace was the sea

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

 

13

 

the night

 

 

i shelter unsheltered

i shelter day blind

delicate flammable

i shelter this old shell

among so many other shells

that bursts with stinking fires

child-gunpowder

and pure reason exalted vertebrates

 

and the eye grows

ejects fires the hands

and the eye suddenly flesh

goes to meet the unseeing

distills in bars not tears but

iron sharks venereal soup

and the eye of sudden city

gets lost in the museum of wrath

body without funeral

the son rolls like a moon

 

like that other time

in my creak-filled horror

in my suitcase of bird

the futureless girl

drinks her foolish name

 

i brood

my light tongue

on this crack

bitter accomplice

of the dayless awakening

i feed on eyelid shine of dead lark

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

 

38

 

and the words

 

and the

words

 

and the patios that burn

long after the sun

no longer crossed by any evil no

steps embraced

 

and the patios and the words

 

─Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

 

(from distancias, 1984)

 

 

Stroos

 

stroos

one of the great evils

that affect wominhood

before they called it stress

and before that strass

or Strauss

it's like a waltz

the shadowless woman stumbled through

there's no drama she's drunk

drunk the bitch

 

stross

 

(from ova completa, 1987)

 

—Translated from the Spanish by Renata Treitel

 

Permissions

 

Selections from distancias

Reprinted from distancias/distances, trans. by Renata Treitel (Los Angeles: Sun & Moon Press, 1994). Copyright ©1994 by Renata Treitel. Reprinted by permission of Sun & Moon Press.

 

"Stroos"

©2002 by Renata Treitel. Reprinted by permission of Renata Treitel.