Reborn in Ink

Poetry. Translation. Uruguayan poet Laura Cesarco Eglin presents poems both urgent and dreamlike as she contends with a father's death and savors the intensity of daily reality.

"These poems excel in the art of astonishing transformation. Lipstick becomes a remembrance of the selection line of life versus death in the Holocaust. An eyelash becomes the site of all hope, glued to the chest, and brushing hair turns into a chance to learn 'eccentricity in community.' These beautiful translations seem to know their own irresistibility, as they capture the poet's understanding that her work will be translated: 'these tears that escape translation / but are in fact translated as I say-Help me.' It may be simpler to call this book Uruguayan poetry or Jewish poetry, but it is more accurate to say, here is Laura Cesarco Eglin, a poet of eyelashes, hopes, and the world itself."

-Aviya Kushner, author of The Grammar of God: A Journey into the Words and Worlds of the Bible

"The shadow of her father's death and that of her European Jewish ancestry haunts this lyrical collection, Reborn in Ink, by the contemporary Uruguayan poet Laura Cesarco Eglin, which is always alert to the power of the unsaid evoked by words. The poems are deftly translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Catherine Jagoe, who are mindful that 'the pauses make / the reading.' The elegiac tone of these beautiful poems attests to poetry's ability to transform loss into rebirth."

-Sharon Dolin, author of Manual for Living, translator of Book of Minutes

"Laura Cesarco deals with daily life, personal observations, and reflections; in her poems language becomes a testing ground. She constantly uses the sounds of words, making them heard as the text unfolds. An inspired book."

-Roberto Appratto, author of Levemente ondulado