Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and publisher of Restless Books. His latest books are I Love My Selfie (Duke, with Adál) and Quixote: The Novel and the World (Norton). He has translated into English the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Neruda, among others. He is also the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry (2011).
Photo by Matt Artz / Unsplash
I write with words that have shadow but don’t shelter
no sooner do I start this page insomnia burns it
not the words but what they consume is what reality start...
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950
Desnudo bajando una escalera...