The University of Arizona Press
Date: Monday, June 17, 2024
Time: 6:30 p.m., PDT
Where: Verbatim Books, 3793 30th Street, North Park, San Diego, California
Margarita Pintado Burgos will read from her book, Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat, as part of the “Forces of Nature: A Reading on Love, War & God” event at Verbatim Books in San Diego. Pintado will read alongside other featured poets including Donna Spruijt-Metz, Heidi Seaborn, and Carly Marie DeMento. A moderated conversation will follow the reading where the audience will have the opportunity to ask questions.
This event is open to the public and free to attend. Doors open at 6:15 p.m.
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.
