During Nights/Noches

This selection of my translations of twenty-nine poems and six short stories from Nela Rio's voluminous production offers a broad spectrum of her writing from the 1980s to 2002. Because the images cast on Rio's canvas vary in their degrees of darkness and their multiple shades of light and colour, the placement of the chosen texts is not chronological but an off-centre presentation of experiences and emotions in a counterpoint of tension. Throughout the whole Rio weaves a mystical thread that affirms life as a celebration. Her gifts of metaphorical lyricism bestow an aura of mystery and enchantment, so that her fiction also displays characteristics of poetry and myth, as an example "The Space of Light," the short story that provides the title and concludes the selections. Short stories such as "Oblivion Travels in a Black Car," and "Maria de la Victoria," are allegoric poetic prose. Rio's lyrical skills are fully demonstrated in "The Wisteria Garden," where the language of flowers in the paintings of the artist speak of domestic violence, and in "Marietta, at the Angelus," in which the language of music translates desire. "Lucrecia" is a paradoxical celebration of solidarity and victory of women over oppression. Of her seven volumes of poetry represented in these selections, the poems of her manuscript "Poesia y otros ritmos" (Poetry and Other Rhythms) were skilfully constructed to develop the theme according to the beat of a particular instrument of dance of Latin American music. Los espejos hacen preguntas/The Mirrors Ask Questions are poems inspired by a 16th century Dominican poet nun living in Santo Domingo of Hispaniola (today the Dominican Republic). Rio's poetry gives birth tolight. It rings with empathy for others. This is most poignantly expressed in Francisca sin techo/Francisca Homeless, a long lyrical poem of four cantos of harsh realities and disillusionment. The collection is a eulogy honouring women and also a call to celebrate individual lives, of the past, in the present, and the ones of the future.