The Night / Review

Reviewed by Alan Gilbert for The Village Voice and John Palattalla for The Nation

The Village Voice:

"Fluid borders...between inner and outer worlds are strikingly rendered in Forrest Gander's translations of Mexican poet Coral Bracho, gathered in Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho (New Directions)."

The Nation:

As a translator, Gander has been drawn to Latin American poets--recently, the Bolivian Jamie Saenz and the Mexican Coral Bracho--whose lyrics mint idiosyncratic languages. In Gander's renditions, the relentless talk of the poète maudit Saenz veers jaggedly and happily from reticence to flamboyance, from supplication to swagger, while the meditations of Bracho, with their languid, impetuous and sultry descriptions of the depths and textures of language and the physical world, surge and twist across the page.