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What People Are Saying
“Olive Esther Kuhn delivers an exuberant exercise in poetic translation and literary critique. They merge an “ancestral” cultural stream of writers and thinkers with their own experience to explore Queer identities of the past, present and future. Queerness and its socio-political implications is at the soul of Losing Lorca, be it Kuhn’s translations of Lorca’s poetry, or in their own poetic offerings also included, or by the very nature of how the book is structured. Losing Lorca is itself a camera, focused on historical facts filtered through a Queer lens, a potent snapshot of the hopefulness that reparative reading can yield. In Olive Esther Kuhn's unique gaze, there is much to be found.”
— Joseph Ivo von Vespri
“We are fortunate indeed to have a guide like Olive Esther Kuhn to accompany us through the recursive Hell/Purgatory/Heaven of Federico Garcia Lorca’s eternal surrealist geography. Losing Lorca queers translation, composing & commentary with determined courage, telling old stories & new fables undaunted by a Spanish Civil Guard that still haunts us but cannot (we must believe) dominate our imaginations.”
— Eli Goldblatt
“Kuhn’s translations of Federico Garcia Lorca's work deploys reparative rewriting and revelatory experimentation. They draw from Lorca's language ways to envision opportunities for discovery and of “moving beyond.” With renewed urgency, Kuhn looks through the lens of Queerness for roadmaps to inspiration within Lorca's poetry. Losing Lorca dynamically conveys, in English, the Andalusian poet’s mood of eerie dreamscapes and sonority. With light gestures toward connections between the past and what is possible toward an unspecified beyond, Kuhn’s writing is both subtle and bold, joyful and suggestive, and replete with hope of Jose Esteban Muñoz’s vision of futurity. ”
— Nicole Caso
June 28, 2020 — LOSING LORCA: A Global Pride Talk between writer & translator Olive Esther Kuhn and poet, artist & publisher Christian Ortega
C: Hello everyone, Christian Ortega here, from Recto y Verso Editions, and we’re going to discuss the wonderful new book by Olive Esther Kuhn, just released by Recto y Verso Editions. I have my copy right here. You can get your copy from oliveestherkuhn.com, the eBook or the Print edition available at book retailers worldwide.So, we’re here to discuss this wonderful book, and we’re going to delve a little deeper and find out how this all came to be. So, Olive, let’s begin at the beginning. This originally started as a senior thesis paper for Bard College?O: [nods] Yeah. Hi Christian, hi everyone. So yeah, I was a creative writing and Spanish major at Bard, and I was interested in translating, and I was trying to find a text to translate and I picked up Romancero Gitano by [Federico García] Lorca, and I kind of just like fell in love with his weird, colorful, smelly poetry. And I was also at that time kind of like coming into my queerness as a human being, and also reading queer theory for the first time, and I started thinking about what it means to be a queer person translating another queer person, to do a translation (of parts of Romancero Gitano, I only had nine months so I couldn’t do the whole book) that was kind of leaning into both the historical and the material things that were happening like around Lorca at the time and also around this kind of ahistorical, like what does it mean to be queer, on print… C: When you decided to use your senior thesis paper, and when I decided to be the editor, did you at a certain point, at the beginning of this process, did you kind of feel like… What’s the metaphor I’m trying to say…? Did you kind of feel like you slipped into your own frying pan at the beginning? When I was suggesting try this, try that, flesh this out, this isn’t working, that isn’t working, did you feel like, oh shit I got in the soup now? O: [laughs] Yeah. I like slipped into your own frying pan. I don’t think that’s an expression, but I think it is now. Yeah, because I feel like at first I was like, oh, yeah, we’ll put like a, you know, we’ll change up the language a little bit, and like take care to get rid of some of the footnotes, and deal with the copyright issues, and it’ll be like my paper but in a book form with a nice cover. C: At any point in the beginning did you think oh, this will be a piece of cake? Or this won’t take over… How many? Eighteen months? It’s been more than eighteen months...? O: It’s been two years. C: Yeah, at least two years. When you wrote the introduction—Or, when you wrote the forward, you say “after eighteen months I bring you Losing Lorca,” but it was more-- I mean it was a fun journey, we had a really fun time birthing this baby together. O: [laughs] C: Going back to the first question about Lorca, and your passion, and your interests, and about politics, and about being queer in America or in the world, I just feel… What was interesting, what really reverberated for me, was hearing your younger generation point of view on a lot of things that I as an older gay man personally witnessed and lived through, and you were really touching on a lot of universal things that were reverberating through time, and history, and a lot of things that aren’t in the official story, and I really enjoyed your sensitivity towards your subject matter. And you really-- I’ll be honest, at the beginning of this book I probably could not tell the difference between Lorca and [Pablo] Neruda. Okay? O: [nods and chuckles] C: But I took this journey with you—All I need to know, is that you have a seed of an idea, an artistic idea, and I let you run with it. At the beginning I was not clear what we were going to have at the end of this. Did you sort of tap into some sort of wavelength, historical, astral plane sort of wavelength, or are these just—Where did these feelings all come from is the question? O: I mean, I definitely think that we started collaborating in a way where I would sort of throw stuff at you, and like the stuff that you were resonating with, I’d be like okay this is good. So, I’m really grateful to you for that. And I mean, I don’t know, I’m big on like historical materialism so I think that like the material conditions that we’re living through, even if they look very different person to person, can shape our ideas and I think that a lot of the like—I mean, for me, from my perspective, just knowing that there’s so many of my, like, queer elders so to speak, didn’t survive, you know, is like this weird, weird sad feeling, right? And for you it’s a whole other thing. But I think that like that sense of incandescent loss was what drew me to Lorca’s work in the first place, it just took me a really, really long time, and a lot of work with you, to kind of focus on that sort of zeitgeist, I guess, or duende (read the book you’ll learn what that is). C: In the process of working on this with you, editing this with you, and publishing it, I did do a lot of research on Spanish Civil War, and Spain in the 1930s, and it was really—the Spanish Civil War was a dry run for World War II and it’s just, you know, it’s just kind of in a lot of the ways how the United States uses third-party countries to wage war. That’s what Spain was. Spain was the third-party proxy battlefield for Germany and England and everybody else. That’s where they—Guernica, that’s where they practiced, you know—pre-bombing London in the blitz, you know, basically Guernica. It might’ve started out as a dry, dry [in air quotes] academic paper, but you put so much of your heart into it, and you really express the importance of Lorca, not just to me, but to everybody, and it’s really— I’ve gotten really great feedback from the book, and it just clicked with people. I’ve gotten great feedback so far, and we’ve just begun this release project. O: I hope it clicks. I mean, and if it doesn’t— I’m assuming it won’t click with everyone, and like I’m really—The thing I’m excited for now is talking to people about it, you know? Because I’m not a historian and I feel like there’s also probably pieces of the puzzle that I’m missing and that I’m excited to learn more about. And I guess the thing that I want is for like reality not to be recursive forever, you know? [chuckles] I guess that’s like kind of the contradiction there is that like this book happened because history keeps repeating itself and I want that to stop, you know? C: One of my favorite moments is, in the book, is when you, I think it’s really more in Side B, where you really break—When you’re talking about Mount Vesuvius— O: [laughs] C: Like you really—You weren’t—You were unafraid to interject yourself into the text, and I felt like that really added, it added another layer, you know? And it personalized it, and it made me—Especially when you were talking about the translation process. What was that part where you’re like you can’t take all your friends with you? I thought that was so beautifully written. It was just really—There were so many moments when we got towards the end of the project where I was rereading it and rereading it, I was just like it really touched my heart. O: Well, and that was like—Those were the parts that like—The parts that you mentioned were the parts that kind of got squeezed out of me when I had like 24 hours to send you a draft. [laughs] C: [laughs] Well hey, usually the best work is done under pressure, so. It’s exciting, and it’s exciting to be releasing this to the world. How does it feel? Like, has it sunk in yet? When did it sink as like this is really real for you? O: I took some copies for everyone who wrote a blurb for the inside cover. I took a copy to the post office today and I mailed it, and I was like wow, that’s the best $11 I ever spent on shipping. C: [laughs] Cool, cool, cool, cool. All right, well, Olive Esther Kuhn, thank you for this time together and congratulations on your first book. One of many more to come, I’m sure. Thank you for your wonderful talent, and we’ll catch you on the flip-flop. O: [laughs loudly] C: Peace out. O: [laughing] I’ll catch you on the flip side, Christian. C: Ciao, ciao. O: [laughes] C: That’s Trucker slang! [laughes ]…1970s stuff. All right, ciao ciao. O: Ciao. C: Peace out. O: See ya. C: All right.July 9, 2020 — LA VOZ con Mariel Fiori: WKNY Radio Kingston Live Interview between Olive Esther Kuhn and host Mariel Fiori
M: This is La Voz with Mariel Fiori, I’m Mariel Fiori. El Prendimiento de Antoñito de Camborio is a poem by Federico García Lorca, a literary classic. Even so, Olive Kuhn said, you know what? I’m going to write another book about Lorca. Good morning, Olive. O: Good morning, Mariel! It’s so good to see you again. M: I should mention that Olive worked for La Voz while they were a student at Bard College. A year? Two years? I’m not sure, it was quite a while. O: Was it a year? I’m not sure (laughs)M: Almost two years. Well, this is your first book, it’s exciting to have it here in our hands. You started this book while you were a student. Let’s talk a little about the writing process.O: Well, I studied poetry and Spanish at Bard. So when I had to write my senior thesis, I decided to translate some Lorca poems because I fell in love with his work.It’s so vivid, just so good. So I was reading Gypsy Ballads by Lorca, and I started researching the book’s historical context. I realized that many of the book's themes, like racism, toxic masculinity, police brutality, are extremely relevant to today. So I decided to translate parts of the book –I didn’t have time to translate the whole book, I only had nine months– but I decided to translate parts of the book with a focus on the historical context, and most centrally, a queer context, because Lorca was killed, in part, for being queer.M: Yes, in the Spanish Civil War. He was one of the first to be shot, assassinated in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He was 38 years old, you say here in your short biography. It’s also know that he was homosexual. What’s the difference between homosexual and queer? Is there a difference?O: Well, yeah, there is a difference. I’m saying that Lorca was queer, but I don’t believe he used that word. For one thing, it’s an English word, and it’s also a bit more modern. I’m using the word queer because, for me, it means– well, in general it means not heterosexual, but it also has a context of political subversion, because the word is a reclaimed word. M: A what word?O: Reclaimed.M: Reclaimed, because the word queer originally means odd, strange, something that people reject. And it’s been reclaimed as an identity?O: Yes.M: Thank you. We’re all here learning, Olive. And we’ve been reading the book. Yesterday, I read a part that I really liked. The book is called Losing Lorca, or Perdiendo a Lorca in Spanish. And then you say ‘a mixtape critique.’ I want to know, why do you say ‘losing’? Why are we losing Lorca in this book? What does it mean?O: I believe that the art of translation is an art of eternal loss. It doesn’t matter how perfect, how intentional the translation is, you lose something in the process. So, for me, translating Lorca and losing Lorca are nearly the same thing. At the same time, though, there’s something beautiful in the act of losing.M: Yes. As they say, the translator is a traitor. And you, instead of translation, call it loss. And, well, I don’t know if I could translate what you wrote in English, but [translates English text verbally into Spanish] “…As is true of any transformation, something is lost. Burn a candle for light, and half the light escapes as heat. To even the most accomplished translator, which I am far from, hauling a piece of language from one language into another game is a mournful game, a game of leaving things behind. You’re walking a significant distance and you can’t carry everything with you. The walk is beautiful and you love everything you carry, but you keep dropping breadcrumbs.” But, it’s called ‘a mixtape critique.; Why mixtape? Can you explain?O: Thanks. Wow. Thanks for translating that. Yes, right, okay. I put out a 100 page academic thesis…wow, it’s my book! (cover of Losing Lorca on screen) and then I was talking with my publisher Christian Ortega of Recto y Verso Editions, and he challenged me to break the academic form that my project was in at that point. I started to cut and reassemble the writing. As I did this, I realized that the process, for me, was very similar to the process of making a mixtape. When you take a song from here, a song from there, you put them together to make something new. And there’s also a personal history. Making mixtapes, or playlists, or what-have-you, for me is a personal experience with with being queer and in the closet and everything… So, I decided to make a mixtape of literary criticism, to mix poetry, translation, my own ideas, other theories (I draw heavily on the theory of José Esteban Muñoz, the futurism of queerness). That’s why I called it a mixtape. And because it sounds cool. M: Of course. And actually, the book comes with two little gifts. It comes with Side A and Side B. On Side A, there is a list of nine songs in Spanish and English. I want to know, why did you choose these songs? I’m going to say their names, and you choose one and explain: Amar Así, Bomba Estereo; True Blue, Angel Olson and Mark Ronson; Boys Don’t Cry, The Cure; Reconstruye, Ciénaga; Me Late, Los Wálters; Hands Up, Blood Orange; Lately, Jamila Woods; Lejos, Sailorfag; HIM, Sam Smith. Why this mixtape within the Lorca book?O: Okay, so Lorca has this concept of duende. The concept doesn’t belong to Lorca, but he wrote about it. Duende is a feeling that beats beneath the surface of a work of art. It’s something very personal, so I chose songs that, for me, have duende. If you want me to explain one– M: One, yes. O: I chose Amar Así by Bomba Estero because it has this sound of sad love that’s joyful at the same time. The music video is also quite interesting. It’s about a gay romance on a Colombian military base. I saw images in that video that reminded me of Lorca’s poetry, especially the Romance of the Spanish Civil Guard. M: Well, it was the Civil Guard that arrested him. He was in hiding, he was living with a family of Falangists, the right-wingers who captured him. According to what you write in the book, one of the bullets, when he was shot, was in the buttocks because he was homosexual, they said it was for being a faggot. And one of the poems that we’re going to listen to, to wrap up this interview, is the Death of Antoñito el Camborio, in this case interpreted by Nati Mistral, and in this poem it’s like history repeats itself, like Lorca wrote his own death. Because that’s more or less what happened to him.O: Yes, it’s as though he was seeing the future. M: Do you feel that, from writing this translation, history is repeating itself today? O: Yes, absolutely. Many queer people, especially trans women and trans women of color, are killed because of the fear and the anger of sexism, of racism…of gay panic, and it’s largely ignored by police– at times aided by police– and this was true of Lorca’s death as well. In both cases, it’s related to other societal problems that have to do with capitalism and fascism, lot’s of things. M: Well, thanks so much, Olive Esther Kuhn, for talking with us about your new book, Losing Lorca: a mixtape critique. Anyone interested in buying it can go to the website www.oliveestherkuhn.com and buy the book as either an ebook or paper copy. Many thanks, Olive, and good luck with everything. O: Thank you so much, Mariel! It was great to see you again.