Fiat Lux by Paula Abramo Reviewed by: Brent Ameneyro

Fiat Lux by Paula Abramo
Translator: Dick Cluster

Published: 8 July 2022
Publisher: Flowersong Press
Length: 120 pages
ISBN: 978-1953447449
Reviewed by: Brent Ameneyro

In many instances, poets blur the line between narrative and lyric. Some poems gently lean one way or the other without concern for classification. Paula Abramo’s Fiat Lux revels in narrative, declaring itself a vessel for the poet’s ancestors to live forever. Translator Dick Cluster admits that “Translating this book of poetry has also been somewhat like translating a novel…” because of the recurring characters and scenes. As a poet that is interested in the exploration of ancestry and in genre bending styles, I was immediately enthralled by this collection.

Cluster introduces the book by providing critical context. He explains that the poet’s ancestors were political refugees from Italy and Europe in the early twentieth century; they went from Brazil to Bolivia to Mexico over the course of several decades. Cluster offers his view on the collection: “I see the book as a meditation on the act of writing poetry and bringing historical characters to life.” The meditative qualities are represented by the image of striking a match. Cluster goes on to explain that the poet’s grandmother worked in a match factory in Brazil which made the brand of matches called Fiat Lux (Latin for “let there be light”).

Each poem starts with its own poetic epigraph in italics. This is where the image of the match comes in, as if igniting each poem. The structure of the poems coupled with the connecting narratives makes the book feel closer to a hybrid text, matching the expectations set by Cluster. I think the italicized epigraphs are influenced by contemporary poets like Frank Bidart. I use the term “epigraph” only because I know no other way to describe it. Each epigraph is more of a micro lyric poem used to introduce the narrative body. The narrative qualities of the poems at times feel like lineated prose. I see this juxtaposition of contemporary aesthetic with traditional narrative as representative of the present-day poet transmogrifying historical events.

The collection begins with the poem “Angelina,” with an epigraph that gracefully drops the reader in:

……………………..strike a match
……………………………but I dislike this essential flaw in the hapless imperative
……………………..strike it
……………………………as if you could never command yourself
……………………………as if that required, routinely, a sharp splitting in two
……………………..strike it
……………………..okay I’ve struck it –now what?

……………………..“Light the stove.”
……………………..“Yes ma’am.”

The poem continues with descriptions of Angelina that show her as a complex character that carries the qualities of her ancestors. Angelina “has her grandmother’s hunger” and is shown eating the shrimp as she cooks it. The reader is carried through her qualities as if they don’t belong to her: her tongue, her breasts, all of her traced back to her roots. This complicates the notion of individual identity. Even her hunger is traced back further, pushed deeper into her ancestry: “she has the hunger of her grandmother’s / grandmother.” The poem begins with a debate on her skin and whether certain visible marks are caused by the sun or whether they’re hereditary. This debate—not unlike the classic “nature versus nurture” debate—brings the reader to question the concepts of origin and storytelling, as if to suggest that the story of the individual begins even before they are born.

The book starts and ends with poems titled “Angelina”. The first poem starts with the line “strike a match,” and the final line of the last poem tells the reader that the light “is no longer the light of a match.” Because this comes shortly after a line about choosing between “compliance and disobedience,” and after a collection that catalogues many hardships (wrongful imprisonments, political injustices, child labor, etc.), I read the metaphor of light without the flame of the match as a sign of hope. That the light is an inner strength of sorts; the strength to disobey the command to strike a match, the strength to disobey by eating the shrimp she’s cooking, or simply the strength to persevere. I also see the light symbolizing the author shining a light on injustice. Also in the final poem, the reader is told directly that Angelina is fictional in the first line after the epigraph. I understood this to be a way of breaking the fourth wall, to remind the reader that all the characters are some blend of imagination/meditation and history. 

Abramo blends narrative with lyric and imagination with history, which, I believe, is all done to capture the multiple countries, people, and time periods represented throughout the collection. In other words, poetry is the appropriate genre for this collection as it allows the author to transcend boundaries, to transform lives into light. Abramo also uses multiple languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, and Greek) to blur borders. The poem titled “Hic Incipit Vita Nova. Maria Zélia Political Prison, 1935” contains a Latin phrase both in the title and as the last line of the poem. According to Google Translate, the phrase means “here begins a new life.” In the poem, a translator of Dante is named, which I understood to be a hint to the reader that this poem is an allusion to Dante’s “La Vita Nuova.” Dante’s text contains a combination of both prose and verse, so by alluding to this, Abramo tells the reader that this poem (and arguably the entire collection) is breathing “new life” into the deepest parts of literary tradition. And what might otherwise appear to be hybrid or even experimental is clarified here as something that has been part of literature for hundreds of years.

The hybridity of the book is apparent in form and other times it is alluded to directly in the lines of the poems:

……………………..That opacity of a name that enlarges
……………………..the person you imagine,
……………………..Think
……………………..of all the strange creatures, the vermin,
……………………..the longleggedgodafwul monsters
……………………..that populate the plagues
……………………..your grandfather fought so fiercely
……………………..under that hybrid name:
……………………..Marcelo di Abiamo du Nancy,
……………………..neither French nor Brazilian nor Italian
……………………..disguised as a foreigner, disguised
……………………..as a foreigner, disguised

In this poem, “I’m Here to Fight Epizootics,” Abramo doesn’t shy away from the hybridity of the collection. Hybrid, here, is a metaphor for the way Abramo’s ancestors had to blur their identities to survive. The idea of identity is also further complicated here. The poem challenges the definition of the word “foreigner,” and asks the reader to consider identity in association with place. In other words, the reader is challenged by the following questions: If a family moves from one country to another to escape hardship, does their identity belong to the old country, the new country, or both? And what happens when the family continues to move, continues to escape hardship—do their descendants carry all the countries in their identities? All the hardships?

Paula Abramo was born in Mexico City in 1980. She earned a degree in Classical Languages and Literatures, has been awarded two poetry fellowships by the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, and been an invited to literary festivals and conferences in Brazil, Colombia, Sweden, Argentina, Portugal, France, Cuba, Germany, and Slovakia. Her poem cycle FIAT LUX won the 2013 Premio de Poesías Joaquín Xirau Icaza for the best book by a writer under 40. Her poems have been selected for anthologies of contemporary Mexican and worldwide poetry, both in Spanish and in translation to Portuguese, German, and French, and appeared in journals in the U.S., Central and South America, and Europe.

Dick Cluster is a writer and translator in Oakland, California. Translations published in 2022 include Paula Abramo’s Fiat Lux (FlowerSong Press), Gabriela Alemán’s Family Album (City Lights Books), and poetry by Pedro de Jesús (Asymptote Journal). He is the author of a crime novel series featuring car mechanic Alex Glauberman (reissued in 2015 by booksbnimble.com) and co-author, with Rafael Hernández, of History of Havana, a social history of the Cuban capital (OR Books, 2018). He also translates scholarly work from the Caribbean, Mexico, South America, and Spain.

Brent Ameneyro earned his MFA at San Diego State University where he was awarded the 2021 SRS Research Award for Diversity, Inclusion and Social Justice. He is the 2022–2023 Letras Latinas Poetry Coalition Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. Visit him at www.BrentAmeneyro.com 

21 December 2022