Letters That Breathe Fire

"A glimpse into an inspiring, revolutionary project of antaño/yesteryear. Poets, poetry aficionados, anyone with a passion for cross-cultural collaboration, and Latin Americanists will adore this thoughtfully curated work." - Booklist

"As a poet, translator, and lifelong advocate who has known the material consequence of cultural defiance and opposition to government, Margaret Randall relates now the riveting and relevant story of a literary magazine that in its seven and a half years (1962-1969) enabled artistic kinships that radicalized the imagination and political solidarities between poets across the Americas. In an account that endures 'to break down the barriers that separate us,' Randall relates the practical day-to-day demands of editing, the emergent cultural internationalism of the 1960s, resistance to Cold War conformity, and the rise of civil rights activism and student protests in the U.S. and Latin America. Randall conveys those vibrant years in a bold intersection of testimony, history, and reporting, with the support of a chorus – a theater of memory rising from the past as preserved in El Corno Emplumado's archive of letters from readers and contributors alike. These Letters That Breathe Fire are a vitality for our times." - Roberto Tejada, author of Mirrors for Gold and Carbonate of Copper.

"Letters That Breathe Fire is a book of living history, of firsthand reflection, of witness as discourse, of literary and political controversy whose letters trace the trajectory of El CornoEmplumado from the first issue in 1962 to its final issue in 1969. Margaret Randall's informative and meticulously footnoted background commentary both reflects on and historically contextualizes correspondence ranging from such diverse contributors as Thomas Merton, Denise Levertov, Walter Lowenfels, and Ernesto Cardenal. Letters That Breathe Fire is not only a valuable resource, but also compelling reading, a book that is almost impossible to put down as letter after letter, commentary after commentary, continues to speak to us even more powerfully and insightfully given our situation today." - Susan Sherman, founding editor of IKON magazine and author of numerous books including Poetry in Dangerous Times: Two Women, Two Worlds (with Demetria Martínez.)

"Through her insightful commentary and organization of these far-ranging personal communications, Margaret Randall provides a profoundly meaningful context that presents the stirring desires of both the well-known and emerging poets of an era. Her bilingual quarterly, El Corno Emplumado, offered them the chance not only to share their poetry north to south and south to north but also, through their letters, their personal thoughts, concerns, and dreams with each other and with a general readership. This was a truly non-hierarchical open mic and certainly not the norm during a time when most in the north either ignored the global south or filtered on its own terms what little was to be seen and read in the north, a condition that a number of us working as curators and teachers tried to confront and correct in the decades that followed. El Corno was a foundational and creative model of what was possible." - Robert Schweitzer, retired art curator

"This book offers a new and exciting way to read the acclaimed correspondence section of the magazine El Corno Emplumado, edited by Sergio Mondragón and Margaret Randall throughout the 1960s. Randall invites us into a space of dialogue that is timeless, current and, in some cases, prophetic. In addition to an epistolary treasure, it is a window into our common past and, even more so, our common future." - Gabriela Silva Ibargüen, author of Plumas en el viento. Ensayo de periodización, materialidad y contexto de El Corno Emplumado

"The pages of this book are a primer for the kind of politically transformative, international poetry community that you and I can build, dear reader. It's right here, in these pages. It comes to us one issue and one letter at a time, each lovingly annotated by Margaret Randall, the cumulative power of whose years of editorial effort and poetic insight are here, too. We are lucky to have each other and this book." - Tim Johnson, Marfa Book Company