The Farewell Light

Arrowsmith Press is honored to announce the publication of Nidia Hernández's first collection of poems, The Farewell Light. This bilingual edition leaps effortlessly between the natural world and meditations on culture, family, language, and longing. Hernández's work moves the reader beyond the realm of the individual poet toward a deeper human understanding: "I cried until I was water/ until I was sea/ and I began to swim/ toward the depths." A recent Venezuelan immigrant to America, Hernández bridges the gulf between her two countries as she laments, "What I thought lost/ is in the light of this dawn/ I'm not alone/ emptiness is only emptiness/ the sea speaks to me." Hernández's self-possessed poetic voice reflects her decades of engagement with poetry, across languages and continents, pointing out that, "if not understanding each other is the constant/ why should not speaking the same language/ have to be a disaster?" Brilliantly rendered from the Spanish by esteemed translator Rowena Hill, The Farewell Light is a debut not to be missed.