Elegy for Joseph Cornell is at once a monologue; a collection of metafictional microfictions; a series of prose poems; an artist’s quest; the hero’s journey; a filmography, biography, bibliography, and inventory; a travel scrapbook; and a guidebook for creativity.
Argentinian writer María Negroni transcends form and genre as she explores, with both luminous and illuminating results, the life of Joseph Cornell, a solitary urban artist whose work also defied conventional classification.
Author Biography:
María Negroni (Rosario, Argentina) has published over 20 books including poetry, collected essays and novels. Islandia, Night Journey, Andanza (The Tango Lyrics), Mouth of Hell, and The Annunciation have appeared in English, and her work has also been translated into Swedish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. María Negroni received a Guggenheim fellowship for poetry in 1994, a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1998, the Fundación Octavio Paz fellowship for poetry in 2001, and The New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 2005. She also received a National Book Award for her collection of poems El viaje de la noche, a PEN Award for Islandia as best book of poetry in translation (New York 2001), and the Premio Internacional de Ensayo y Narrativa de Siglo XXI for her book Galería Fantástica. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1999 to 2014, and is now director of Argentina’s first creative writing program, at Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero. Allison deFreese has previously translated works by Luis Chitarroni, Carmen Irionda, Amado Nervo, and other Latin American writers. Her writing and literary translations have appeared in 60 magazines and journals, including: The New York Quarterly, The Indiana Review, Southwestern American Literature, Borderlands, Puerto del Sol, Many Mountains Moving, Southword (Munster Literary Centre) and Poetry Kanto (Japan).
