With a supple, meditative approach, Erin Knight explores the complexity of beauty in this first collection by an astonishing new talent. The Sweet Fuels also reflects on the notion of orientation — whether in terms of magnetic north or street signs, the entrails of an animal or the vowels in a name — as a task of translation.
Of the more than four dozen poems in the book, some are written in English, others are rendered from Spanish. Still others perform a high-wire act — written in English, converted to Spanish, and then back into English. The practise of translation allows for a direction that does not try to reorder or simplify the world, but rather emphasizes the promise of continuous engagement with our points of reference.