Sheila-Na-Gig online: Review of Gómez and Franklin’s Último día/Last Day

In reading Ximena Gómez’s & George Franklin’s English translations of Gómez’s poems in Último día/Last Day, my only regret is that I do not speak/read Spanish, for I know these poems must be just as poignant and imagistic in Gómez’s native tongue as they are in these English renditions. Here, the fog of memory and the pinch of loss and nostalgia emerge from the shadows and are not only given voice, but are welcomed into spaces of acceptance by a persona who assures us we can “get used to . . . that vacancy.” Even as she is reminded of her losses in the most surprising everyday moments, the speaker comforts, “The sound of the rain is only a nightmare / Happening on the other side of the window,” and life continues in the drops of coffee in a lover’s mustache, in boot prints in snow, in “Cherry tomatoes in / A glass bowl.”

Available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/%C3%9Altimo-d%C3%ADa-Last-Day-espa%C3%B1ol-ingl%C3%A9s/dp/1732114471/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=gomez+and+franklin+last+day&qid=1577968648&sr=8-1

Read Gómez and Franklin in Sheila-Na-Gig online: https://sheilanagigblog.com/volume-2-3-spring-2018-the-poets/ximena-gomez-george-franklin/

About Grimmgirl

I co-founded the small press poetry magazine Sheila-Na-Gig in California in 1990. I ran the press for 10 years, producing 14 print copies of the journal. I now hold a Ph.D. in 20th Century American Literature from Ohio University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. I am currently an Associate Professor of English at Ohio University Southern, where I teach courses in composition, American literature, and creative writing. My poetry, creative nonfiction, and critical essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in The Brock Review, Proteus, Rattle, Spillway, and the critical anthologies, The Body in Medical Culture; On the Literary Nonfiction of Nancy Mairs; and Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror.

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