Dark Room and Other Poems

Enrique Lihn (1929–1988) was a Chilean poet, short-story writer, novelist, literary critic, playwright, comic book creator, and essayist. Lihn’s book La pieza oscura (The Dark Room, 1963)—also published by New Directions—had a marked impact on poets and writers throughout Latin America, and won the prestigious Casa de las Américas Award. Jonathan Cohen is the editor and compiler of William Carlos Williams’ By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish,1916–1959 and editor and translator of Ernesto Cardenal’s Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems, both published recently by New Directions. John Felstiner is the author of Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. He teaches at Stanford University. David Unger, recipient of Guatemala’s Miguel Ángel Asturias National Literature Prize for lifetime achievement, is a poet, translator, novelist, and essayist. He has translated eighteen titles to date, including his acclaimed re-translation of Guatemalan Nobelist Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Mr. President (Penguin Classics, 2022), The Popol Vuh, and books by Enrique Lihn, Nicanor Parra, Rigoberta Menchú, and Silvia Molina, among others. His most recent novel is In My Eyes, You Are Beautiful (Mosaic Press, 2023).