The University of Arizona Press
When: Tuesday, February 27, 2024
Time: 4 p.m., PST
Where: Fermanian Conference Center, Point Loma Nazarene University, 3900 Lomaland Drive, San Diego, CA
Margarita Pintado Burgos celebrates the launch of her book, Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat at Point Loma Nazarene University, where she is an Associate Professor of Spanish. She will be joined by San Diego poets Katie Manning and Michael Klam. Ojo en celo / Eye in Heat is the 2023 winner of the Ambroggio Prize of the of the Academy of American Poets.
About the book:
Aflame with desire, the eye conjures, dreams, invents itself, sees what it wants. The eye sees what it is able to see.
Ojo en celo / Eye in Heat brings into sharp relief the limits of our gaze. It shows us what it is to escape the mirror and move beyond mirages. Margarita Pintado Burgos invites us to ponder the impasse while showing us ways to see better, to break the habit of lying, and to confront images along with language.
With devastating clarity, Pintado Burgos’s poems, presented in both Spanish and English, give voice to the world within and beyond sight: the plants, the trees, the birds, the ocean waves, the fruit forgotten in the kitchen, the house’s furniture. Light takes on new dimensions to expose, manipulate, destroy, and nourish. Alejandra Quintana Arocho’s sensitive English translation renders the stark force of these poems without smoothing over the language of the original.
