Three Poems from Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst

Issue 11

Uncategorized

Three Poems from Of Death. Minimal Odes

by Hilda Hilst

August, 2019

Of Death. Minimal Odes

latin poems about death

Hilda Hilst

Editor’s Note:

Of Death. Minimal Odes, a verse collection by Brazilian poet Hilda Hilst translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin, was a recipient of the 2019 Best Translated Book Awards. The prize jury commented on the book:

The first collection of Hilda Hilst’s poetry to be appear in English, Of Death. Minimal Odes is masterfully translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin. Hilda Hilst’s odes are searing, tender blasphemies. One is drawn to Of Death in the way we’re drawn to things that might be dangerous. These are poems that lure readers well beyond their best interests, regardless of whatever scars might be sustained. In language that is twisted, animalistic, yet at times plain, Eglin reveals another layer in the work of this Brazilian great.

We are proud to feature a selection of poems from Of Death. Minimal Odes in Latin American Literature Today. Click here to read the poems in the original Portuguese.

Your hooves bandaged
so I won’t hear
your hard trot.
Is this, little mare,
how you’ll come for me?
Or because I thought you
severe and silent
you’ll come as a child
on a shard of china?
Lover
because I disdained you?
Or with the airs of a king
because I made you queen?

As if you fit
on the crest
on the peak
on the obverse of the bone

I try to capture your body
your mountain, your reverse.

As if the lips looked for
their converse
that’s how I look for you
torsion of all depths.

Persecutory, I follow you
tether, muscle.
And you always resemble
everything that runs, time,
the current.

In my mouth. In the emptiness.
In the crooked nose.
Down river you run, silt
stump, towards me.

XVI

Horse, buffalo, little mare
I love you, friend, my death,
if you approach, I jump
as one who wants and doesn’t want
to see the hill, the meadow, the mound
on the other side, as one who wants
and doesn’t dare
touch your fur—gold

the bright red of your skin
as one who doesn’t want.

Translated by Laura Cesarco Eglin

Hilda Hilst

The Brazilian poet, playwright, fiction writer, and essayist, Hilda Hilst was born in 1930 and died in 2004. She is the author of forty books. Literary critics consider her to be one of the most important and controversial twentieth-century writers in the Portuguese language. She has been awarded many literary prizes. She graduated from USP (University of São Paulo) with a degree in Law. In her thirties, Hilst decided to leave the city of São Paulo in order to keep away from social life and concentrate on literature. She went to Campinas and lived in her house Casa do Sol until her death. Because of her strong personality, beauty, intelligence, and her eccentricities, and because Hilst consistently questioned and went against norms and traditions, the myth surrounding Hilst’s image has often overshadowed the importance of her work and the critical analysis of her oeuvre. With the republication of her work by Editora Globo, organized by Alcir Pécora in the early 2000s, Hilst’s work has started gaining more readers in Brazil. She was the author honored in the sixteenth FLIP (Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty) in 2018.

Laura Cesarco Eglin

Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay. Cesarco Eglin translates from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician. She is the translator of Sardine by Miriam Reyes (UDP, 2026). Her translation claus and the scorpion by Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal (co•im•press) was longlisted for both the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry. Cesarco Eglin is also the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press), winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award in Poetry. She co-translated from the Portuñol Fabián Severo’s Night in the North (Eulalia Books). She is also the translator of The Mistaken Place of Things by Gabriela Aguirre (Eulalia Books, 2024). Cesarco Eglin is the author of three collections of poetry and five chapbooks, including Break a Part (Finishing Line Press, 2026). Cesarco Eglin is the co-founding editor and publisher of Veliz Books.

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