Just Published: CUADERNO NEUMEISTER / THE NEUMEISTER NOTEBOOK by Carlota Caulfield

Carlota Caulfield is a poet, translator and literary critic. she is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including At the Paper Gates with Burning Desire, The Book of Giulio Camillo (a model for a theater of memory), El libro de Giulio Camillo (maqueta para un teatro de la memoria) / Il Libro de Giulio Camillo (modello per un teatro della memoria), Movimientos metálicos para juguetes abandonados (First Hispanoamerican Poetry Prize “Dulce María Loynaz”, Spain-Cuba 2002), Quincunce / Quincunx, Ticket to Ride. Essays and Poems, A Mapmaker’s Diary: Selected Poems and Fashionable. Una poeta adicta a la moda. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals in the United States, Europe, and Latin America.

She has also translated the American writer Jack Foley, and the Irish poets Eavan Boland, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Rita Ann Higgins, Paula Meehan, Medbh McGuckian, Sara Berkeley and Catherine Walsh. In addition, she has translated a number of Hispanic poets into English.

About CUADERNO NEUMEISTER / THE NEUMEISTER NOTEBOOK

A collection of poems in Spanish with facing-page English translations by Mary G Berg in collaboration with the poet.

Carlota Caulfield’s poems are detailed observations of an inner music that is constantly created by listening and looking: “You enter the forest. / You follow the night’s path.” This inner music is, as Caulfield puts it (“su materia contra mi materia”), “jazzable.” To the self-referencing poet, the “I” is “you” and shifts as it encounters experience. Boundaries blur in this rich morphing of “the soul’s grottos and…lonely tunnels,” “as if you, suddenly, were to multiply yourself.” For the reader as for the writer, The Neumeister Notebook offers us the rare opportunity not only to live beyond our skins but “to live beyond…understanding.” It is a phenomenology of wonder, a journey to the things themselves and back again as “outer” becomes “inner,” Spanish becomes English, and world becomes spirit: “Stray notes. / Listen to them.”

— Jack Foley

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El numen poético que recorre este Cuaderno Neumeister busca encarnar y ganar voz al registrar íntimamente la experiencia creativa de otros artistas (músicos, pintores, escritores, constructores) con quienes encuentra las más disímiles —aunque no reveladas abiertamente— afinidades o complicidades de vida: islas, exilios…  Su autora, Carlota Caulfield, voz singular dentro de la poesía cubana actual, entrega aquí su diario vivir en la creación artística, lo cual le permite al final del libro transformar ella misma en poesía los objetos más cotidianos que la rodean: una sopera, un frutero, una lámpara.  La anima el lazo humano que implica toda traducción: traducir otras artes en su arte —o su arte en otras artes—, otras vidas en su vida —o su vida en otras vidas— y, fundamentalmente, las cosas físicas en cuerpos de sensual espiritualidad poética.

The poetic numen that moves about this Neumeister Notebook seeks to embody and acquire a voice by recording intimately the creative experience of other artists (musicians, painters, writers, builders) with whom it finds the most dissimilar—though not openly revealed—affinities or complicities of life: islands, exiles...  The author, Carlota Caulfield, a unique voice within current Cuban poetry, delivers here her daily living of artistic creation, which allows her, at the end of the book, to transform into poetry the most everyday objects around her: a tureen, a fruit bowl, a lamp.  Moved by the human bond implicit in all translation, she translates other arts in her art—or her art in other arts—, other lives in her life—or her life in other lives—, and, intrinsically, physical things in bodies of poetic and sensual spirituality.

— Jesús J. Barquet

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Carlota Caulfield finds a simple everyday act of sipping a cup of coffee or eating a croissant gives inspiration. At the same time, the nothingness of one's ownself –“you're the nothing of your other self”--finds inspiration in diverse sources such as jazz, theater, art, photography, architecture, film and literature. In En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, the voices of memory play as masterfully in poems that explore intimate topics as they play in poems more abstract and philosophical. Under a surrealist waterfall of her dreams, Carlota Caulfield soaks up vibrant images and delivers the reader a  singularly modern work.

Carlota Caulfield, en la quotidiana naturalitat de tenir la tassa de cafè als llavis i prendre´s un croissant, troba la inspiració. I a la vegada, el no-res del propi jo -ets el no-res del teu altre jo, diu- s´alimenta de fonts tan diverses com el jazz, el teatre, l'art, la fotografia, l'arquitectura, la cinematografia i la literatura. En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, les veus de la memòria juguen amb mestratge tant en aquells poemes de caràcter intimista com en els de tendència més abstracta i filosòfica. Sota la cascada surrealista dels seus somnis, Carlota Caufield s´enxopa  d'imatges brillants i les ofereix al lector en una obra singularment moderna.

Carlota Caulfield, en la cotidiana naturalidad de tener una taza de café en los labios y tomarse un croissant, encuentra la inspiración. Y a la vez, la nada del propio yo -eres la nada de tu otro yo, dice- se alimenta en fuentes tan diversas como el jazz, el teatro, el arte, la fotografía, la arquitectura, la cinematografía y la literatura. En Cuaderno Neumeister / The Neumeister Notebook, las voces de la memoria juegan con maestría tanto en aquellos poemas de carácter intimista como en aquellos otros que tienden a lo abstracto y filosófico. Bajo la cascada surrealista de sus sueños, Carlota Caulfield se empapa de imágenes brillantes y las ofrece al lector en una obra singularmente moderna.

— Tònia Passola