Unlearning: poems
6 x 9. $10.
“I am countess of thin air/and carry winter inside me,” Uruguayan poet Laura Chalar writes in “Marrying the Earl of Silence.” In her first full-length book of poetry in English, Chalar struggles with the grief of losing her father, but also finds joy in “Little Girl Reading,” a painting by Carlos Herrera: “she is so like life/you could take her hand, take her home.” The collection includes translations from Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese poets, as Chalar moves gracefully through a rich gathering of languages and cultures, and yet the poems are always marvelously her own.