Poetry

Correspondence

Courtesy of Pxhere. Public domain.

by Laura Cesarco Eglin |

 

Correspondence | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

 

Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay. She is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Between Gone and Leaving—Home. She is the publisher of Veliz Books and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown. Her poems and translations have appeared in many journals such as International Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, and more.
Part of the Poetry Curator Series, this poem was selected by February curator Richard Greenfield, who calls the poem a “little house of linguistic wonder.” He writes, “The immediacy of writing out the letters that make up the word ‘Berlin’ (the poem plays with two meanings of ‘letter’ here) suggests a kind of ‘secret’ correspondence between parties who have never met in person. But the name of the place is tactile—even visited through language. The way it all starts with ‘Berlin is for B’ mysteriously inverts that usual logic of the letter standing in for the word. In ‘a house and its windows,’ the poet refers to the origins of the letter B itself–the Greek capital B (‘beta’), an adaptation of the Phoenician letter ‘bēt’ (Phoenician for ‘house’).”
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