Read more
"Object permanence" refers to the early developmental stage in which the child learns that the world exists independently of one's own ability to perceive it. In this, her first full-length collection of poems, Michelle Gil-Montero unveils the elusive debris of daily life in order to invoke, paradoxically, its impermanence. These poems summon the liminal world of early motherhood, of early morning, of seasons in transition. Inhabiting a terrain of post-industrial landscapes at once familiar and not-a space where what isn't encroaches on what is-Gil-Montero's pitch-perfect, emotionally resonant lyric lines pressure the expressive possibilities of language. Sound hovers on the verge of becoming object. Object threatens to evaporate into sound.
About the author
Michelle Gil-Montero is a poet and translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, hybrid-genre work, and criticism. She has translated Poetry After the Invention of América: Don't Light the Flower by Andrés Ajens (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Mouth of Hell (Action Books, 2013), The Tango Lyrics (Quattro Books, 2013), Dark Museum (Action Books, 2015), The Annunciation (Action Books, 2019), and Berlin Interlude (Black Square Editions, coming in 2020) by María Negroni; as well as This Blue Novel (Action Books, 2016, National Translation Award semi-finalist) and Edinburgh Notebook (Action Books, coming in 2020) by Valerie Mejer Caso. She has been awarded fellowships from the NEA and Howard Foundation, as well as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant to Argentina, a PEN¿/¿Heim Translation Prize, a SUR Translation Support Grant, and an Academy of American Poets University Prize. She is the author of the chapbook Attached Houses (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013). She has an M.F.A. in Poetry from The University of Iowa and a B.A. in English from Brown University. She lives in Pittsburgh and is Associate Professor of English at Saint Vincent College, where she directs the Minor in Literary Translation. She is the publisher of Eulalia Books (eulaliabooks.com).
