diamonds & rust
poems by Catalina Vergara
translated from the Spanish
by Tiffany Troy
unpaginated, paper, staple-bound
Toad Press, 2025. $6.00
poems in Spanish by Catalina Vergara
English translations by Tiffany Troy
cover art by Magdalena Vergara
In
this tremendous chapbook, Mars is crummy, rusty, but alive, the planet
confronting its feminine counterpart. The lyrical subject is enigmatic
(masculine), or rather, enigmatic (feminine). It slips between lowercase
letters, between caesuras and enjambments, leaping between silences and
blank spaces behind the melancholy of romantic or emotional
misunderstandings..... Vergara contrasts the pristine, clear, naked
transparency of the diamond with its companion fragility, with the
dirty, dark, and discomforting texture of rust. We all desire diamonds.
No one wants rust, or do we? / En
esta tremenda obra, Marte siendo desierto, oxidado, pero con vida,
enfrentado el planeta a su contraste femenino. El sujeto lírico es
enigmático, o más bien enigmática. Se cuela entre las minúsculas y los
desbordes de la pausa versal y los encabalgamientos, salta entre los
silencios y los espacios en blanco tras la melancolía de ese
desencuentro amoroso/afectivo..... Vergara contraste entre lo prístino,
claro, desnudo de la transparencia en el diamante y su fragilidad,
versus la textura sucia, oscura y poco deseada del óxido. Todos queremos
diamantes, pero nadie quiere el óxido ¿o sí? - Blanca Hernández, author of Enmirlada
Catalina Vergara is a writer who was born in Santiago de Chile in 1998. She studied Creative Literature and majored in Education at the Universidad Diego Portales. diamonds & rust' was written in a poetry workshop taught by Raúl Zurita. She published a science fiction novel titled Vulnicura through Aurea Ediciones. Catalina explores themes that stretch reality and the limits of what is perceptible through an occult and queer framework.
Tiffany Troy is a poet, translator, and critic. Based in Flushing, Queens, her poems revolve around her dreams and the dreams she carries. Tiffany is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and the chapbook When Ilium Burns (Bottlecap Press). She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, Assistant Poetry Editor at Asymptote, and Co-Editor of Matter.
Reviews & Praise
Diamonds and Rust es, en definitiva, un poemario que interroga el deseo y la forma en que lo habitamos: como carencia, como fantasía, como forma de contemplación. Explora esa línea limite donde el otro amado puede volverse tan lejano que termina por convertirse en figura artística, y no en presencia viva. Y, sin embargo, también hay en estos versos una necesidad entre líneas de ser tocado, de romper la distancia, de ser deseado también, de romper con la poesía que requiere de decoro para transmitir una emoción tan compleja como lo es el amar.
- Franco Fuentes, Asco Zine
diamonds & rust is, ultimately, a chapbook that interrogates desire and the way we inhabit it: as an absence, as fantasy or as a form of contemplation. It explores that limit where the beloved other can become so distanced from the self that they transform into an artistic figure rather than a living presence. And yet, between these lines also exists a need to be touched, to break the distance, to also be desired, and to break with the decorum poetry requires to convey an emotion as complex as to love. - Franco Fuentes, Asco Zine
The sixth dimension is essentially the “multiverse” – it contains all possibilities. The poet imagines a kind of fulfillment in the silence of dream that spells out the essence of the sixth dimension. In a note, Vergara explains her drive behind diamonds & rust, “El poemario es una sutura entre mi dolor, el de Baez y el silencio de aquellos que sufren por un amor imposible, una relacion corosiva.” (“The collection of poems is a suture between my pain, Baez’s pain, and the silence of those who suffer from an impossible love, a corrosive relationship.”) Re-written silence means suffering may be redeemed in another world, a parallel universe. Call it wish-fulfillment or liken it to the 18th century German “Sturm und Drang” movement with its emphasis on intense emotion, the impulse is sincere, searing.- Charles Rammelkamp, London Grip
.png)
