Description

Kenia Cano

Animal for the Eyes

Translated by Indran Amirthanayagam

ISBN: 978-1-956921-38-0 (pbk.)

(April 1, 2025; preorder pricing available through 4/1/25, use coupon code “animal”)

In Animal For The Eyes poems respond to violence, particularly in the state of Morelos, Mexico. They refuse, however, to reproduce the horrendous acts and yet they do not stand aside. How to reconcile the image of a bodily sanctuary against the heightened image of a cadaverous culture? How to preserve innocence in this context?
The deer, an easy and yet attentive prey, is one of the symbolic elements in this poetic scenario. In language that goes from prayers (in the manner of Vedic prayers) to a fragmented and confused postmodernism, through notes, images and phrases, the poems reveal the pursuit of innocence in a vulnerable and hostile environment. This body of sound invites us to a free and meditative dialogue.

An Animal for the Eyes is shrewd and hesitant, agile and furtive as the white deer of poetry… a lyrical framework that can be read as a great long poem whose tonal variations are sustained, beyond the richness of images and the handling of planes of consciousness and play of mirrors… with a measured tone in her diction and with the expressive sensuality of her voice. Through the allegory of the white deer as a common thread, this book becomes a vehicle for the paths, visions, dreams and dwellings that populate the poetry of Kenia Cano.

—Ursus Sartoris

In Animal For The Eyes Kenia Cano’s poetry reaches a maturation full of deep intensity and color. The symbolic deer emerges in the poems again and again. The first line of the book says: “She has a white deer in her eyes”. In successive poems the deer may become a surrogate image of the father, or a decapitated white deer, or a disembodied deer of which only the shadow is seen. Family and amorous ties are linked with the deer and its multiple presences. Remembrances are linked with dreams or with the perception that from dreams other glimpses of reality are captured, where memories themselves are questioned. However, the certainty of the body is repeatedly affirmed: “My body is a vehicle of fire”, to later say “My body is an open plain.”

—Elsa Cross.

The conflation of women and animals is a trope nearly as old as culture itself. In Animal for the Eyes, Mexican poet Kenia Cano turns this misogynistic coupling on its head, celebrating the strength of women and animals while decrying the trauma they have faced. From the biblical Judith to the medieval Hildegard of Bingen to the women of Cano’s community who wage “silent battles” amid injustice and abuse, women hold their heads high in these poems, persevering even in horrendous circumstances. Deer – a symbol for the divine in many cultures – move through the book with power and vulnerability. Cano’s visually evocative imagery comes alive for an English-speaking audience in this passionate translation by Indran Amirthanayagam. In a time when women, animals, and indeed the earth itself are all faced with violence, Cano’s poetry is necessary and urgent.

—Jeannine M. Pitas, author of Or/And: Poems and co-translator of A Sea at Dawn by Silvia Guerra