Poemas de Filadelfia: Philadelphia PoemsSandro Chiri’s poems are dreamlike despite their very clear and exact details. In a poem such as “Vislumbro la ciudad” (“I See the City”), characters emerge from a fog of memory: “…I set out to see this / City with the shape / Of a flirtatious woman, / To smell / Its bars…” The poems certainly are “de Filadelfia” and the smoky, foggy, snowy city serves as a fitting backdrop for these meditations on foreignness and belonging. The poems feel to be smudged, backward glances through dark shades, but Chiri continues to reach out to many “yous” of his poems, including his readers. The first two poems in this collection are addressed “A mi lectora” and “A mi lector,” to the poet’s female and male readers. Poe and Whitman are conjured in separate pieces, their ghosts contributing to the collection’s alternately mysterious and forthcoming mood. Occasionally, the English translation by Raymond McConnie is too on-the-nose literal, and the spirit of the original Spanish is muted as in the poem, “Yo también escribí un poema de amor en inglés.” “It happened at the corner, by the traffic light, / Where without any shame / our mouths were joined” offers only the strictest meaning of “Fue en la esquina, frente al semáforo, / y sin ninguna vergüenza / nuestras bocas se juntarón.” Thankfully, English and Spanish versions of each poem face one another, so the taste and intention of the original is available to the reader. A series of photos by Robert Dewey at the end of the collection offer a visual representation of the images conjured by Chiri throughout: snowy, shadowy, solitary Philadelphia. The final poem of the collection, “Relámpago,” or “Flash of Lightning,” casts the poet as reader, “lector” of books of physics wherein he finds a poem: “like the rivers of the night, / on the infinite sky / Books of Physics / Travel and dream.” Travel and dream are certainly elements of this collection which assembles a series of snapshot moments, flashes not of lightning, but of a camera. Sandro Chiri’s Poemas de Filadelfia: Philadelphia Poems express an engagement in and understanding of place that a native of this city might never quite achieve.
-Courtney Bambrick
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