MAURA STANTON [10.423]

Maura Stanton

Maura Stanton (nacida el 09 de septiembre 1946) es una poeta y escritora.

Maura Stanton nació en Evanston, Illinois , EE.UU. Recibió su licenciatura de la Universidad de Minnesota en 1969, y su maestría en 1971 de la Universidad de Iowa .

Ha enseñado en la Universidad Estatal de Nueva York en Cortland (1972-1973), la Universidad de Richmond (1973-1977), la Universidad Estatal de Humboldt (1977-1978), la Universidad de Arizona (1978-1982), y la Universidad de Indiana, desde 1982. También fue nombrada autora distinguida en residencia en la Universidad Mary Washington para el curso académico 1981/82.

PREMIOS

Lawrence Foundation Prize in Fiction from Michigan Quarterly Review in 1982

Frances Steloff Fiction Prize in 1975

National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1974 and 1982

1998 Nelson Algren Awards "Ping-Pong"

2001 Richard Sullivan Award in Short Fiction

2003 Michigan Literary Fiction Award

Obras 

Little-Known Birl of The Inner Eye (after the picture by Morris Graves), Oxford Poetry Vol III No 1 (Winter 1986) 

Through the Dark , Caffine Destiny online

Royal Harp , The Atlantic, October 2008

God's Ode to Creation , Verse Daily

Poesía Libros 

Snow on Snow . Yale University Press. January 1, 1975.

Cries of Swimmers . University of Utah Press. January 1, 1984. ISBN 978-0-88748-124-6 .

Tales of the Supernatural . David R Godine. October 1988. ISBN 978-0-87923-750-9 .

Glacier Wine . Carnegie Mellon Press. January 2001. ISBN 978-0-88748-340-0 .

Life Among the Trolls . Carnegie Mellon Press. April 1998. ISBN 978-0-88748-267-0 .

Immortal Sofa . University of Illinois Press. July 28, 2008. ISBN 978-0-252-07580-3 .

Libros de Cuentos cortos 

THE COUNTRY I COME FROM . Milkweed Editions. October 1988. ISBN 978-0-915943-33-3 .

Do not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling . University of Notre Dame Press. November 28, 2001. ISBN 978-0-268-02556-4 .

CITIES IN THE SEA . University of Michigan Press. Fall 2003. ISBN 978-0-472-11364-4 .

NovelAS

Molly Companion . Bobbs-Merrill. January 1, 1977.

Antologías

Jim Elledge, Susan Swartwout, ed. (1999). Real things . Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-33434-3 .

Paul Muldoon, David Lehman, ed. (2005). The Best American Poetry 2005 . Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-7432-5738-1 

Jack Elliott Myers Jack Elliott Myers , Roger Weingarten, ed. (2005). New American Poets . David R. Godine Publisher. ISBN 978-1-56792-302-5 

Niñez

Solía tenderme de espaldas, imaginando

una casa invertida en el techo de mi casa

donde paseaba sola por habitaciones vacías.

No había muebles

allá arriba, sólo un globo de vidrio en el suelo,

y barreras hasta la altura de las rodillas en cada puerta.

Las ventanas, bajas y con alféizar, se abrían al cielo azul.

Nada colgaba en el armario; hasta la cocina

parecía inmaculada, un lugar para la meditación.

Me gustaba caminar por el yeso que formaba remolinos

entrar en las partes de la casa que no podía ver.

El murmullo de la otra casa, ahora mi techo,

sólo me llegaba débilmente. Levantaba la vista

y descubría a mis hermanos mirando viejos dibujos animados.

o a mi madre pasando la aspiradora por la fea alfombra.

Observaba asombrada las camas deshechas, el desorden,

zapatos, muñecas a medio vestir, el teléfono,

luego regresaba vertiginosamente a mi planta perfecta

donde nunca hablaba u oía a nadie.

Debo de haber doblado en el vestíbulo equivocado,

o abierto una puerta que se cerró detrás de mí,

porque ahora vivo en el techo, no en el suelo.

Esta es mi casa, habitación vacía tras habitación vacía.

¿Cómo haré para regresar a la casa verdadera,

donde mis hermanas derraman la leche, mi padre llama

y yo estoy sentada a la mesa, comiendo cereales?

Lleno de muebles mis habitaciones blancas,

cuelgo cortinas sobre el penetrante azul de fuera.

Yazgo de espaldas. Me esfuerzo por mirar hacia abajo.

El techo es más alto de lo que solía,

el suelo está tan lejos que no puedo determinar

en qué habitación me encuentro, en qué año, en qué vida.

(texto tomado del sitio "otra iglesia es imposible",versión de Jonio González.)

Childhood 

I used to lie on my back, imagining

A reverse house on the ceiling of my house

Where I could walk around in empty rooms

all by myself. There was no furniture

Up there, only a glass globe in the floor,

And knee-high barriers at every door.

The low silled windows opened on blue air.

Nothing hung in the closet; even the kitchen

Seemed immaculate, a place for thought.

I liked to walk across the swirling plaster

Into the parts of the house I couldn't see.

The hum from the other house, now my ceiling,

Reached me only faintly. I'd look up

to find my brothers watching old cartoons,

Or my mother vacuuming the ugly carpet.

I'd stare amazed at unmade beds, the clutter,

Shoes, half-dressed dolls, the telephone,

Then return dizzily to my perfect floorplan

Where I never spoke or listened to anyone.

I must have turned down the wrong hall,

Or opened a door that locked shut behind me,

for I live on the ceiling now, not the floor.

This is my house, room after empty room.

How do I ever get back to the real house

Where my sisters spill milk, my father calls,

And I am at the table, eating cereal?

I fill my white rooms with furniture,

Hang curtains over the piercing blue outside.

I lie on my back. I strive to look down.

This ceiling is higher than it used to be,

The floor so far away I can't determine

Which room I'm in, which year, which life.

Rings

A man stoops on the sidewalk to pluck up

a wedding band.  “Is this your ring?” he calls.

“No,” I say.  I head down the Rue Royale.

That’s the third ring I’ve been offered today.

Paris is rich in rings—somebody’s sure

to find one on the pavement at your feet.

You’re meant to think it’s valuable and claim it,

then pay a small “reward” to the finder.

Rings are on my mind when I reach the church

of the Madeleine, and climb the crowded steps

looking for the spot where my parents poised

for their wedding photo after the war.

New rings gleamed on their joined hands

as they stood smiling in army uniforms.

My father’s ring was a plain gold band,

my mother’s sparkled with a small diamond.

Her ring slipped off her finger in her eighties

when she was shopping.  She never found it.

My father’s?  Buried with him? Given away?

A red-haired woman jostles me, then kneels,

pretending to find something.  “Is this yours?”

she cries out.  She holds up a shiny ring.

I should just laugh--but it feels uncanny.

My heart skips, as if she’d somehow conned

these atoms out of invisibility

after their perilous trip through a time machine.

Are my parents here, too, just out of sight?

The woman’s palm trembles as she shows me

the golden bait.  Will I take it?  “No, no, no.”

House

Funny—to stand in my yard,

hose pointed at the ground.

I don’t want to wet the man

who’s stopped to talk to me,

claiming he owned my house

decades ago.  He tilts his cap

to view the Norway pine

grown tall as a steeple.

“I loved this house!” he says.

Turns out he had children here,

two dogs, a cat named Fetch.

He adores the gambrel roof,

grey clapboards, red shutters.

He remembers the floor plan,

the easy slant of the staircase,

how the morning sun

splashes the front bedroom.

There’s a new deck, I say,

but your old boiler still spits

steam through baseboard pipes.

He laughs.  Says he watched

possums courting at night

from the kitchen nook.

Meanwhile the house eyes us—

so many glittering windows,

indifferent to our human rights.

We might be a pair of crows

flapping about as we peck

bits of trash from the mud.

No, he won’t come in—that’s all.

He limps away—goodbye again.

Lake Nokomis

I’ve walked around this lake for fifty years

always turning right through the dry wetlands

near the Cedar bridge.  Flocks of wild geese

feed on the meadow now, each with a sentinel

craning its long neck to watch my progress,

and warn the others if I leave the sidewalk.

Strange, I’ve wandered longer here than the geese

who never came here when I was a girl.

I guess they’ve learned to avoid the countryside

on their migrations south.  Here in the city

guns are for other people, so the geese

can rest their turbulent wings on leafy lawns,

while I’ve got my cell phone, just in case

somebody’s lurking behind that wall of willows—

and there’s the bench where my mother sat

back when she could walk, and there’s the field

returned to swaying wildflowers and bird calls

where my brothers practiced with their new bows

shooting arrows into bales of yellow hay.

In winter the city built a warming shed.

Wobbly in stiff white figure-skates, I’d totter

down the ramp on freezing nights and glide out

past hockey players to the cloudy patch

closer to the bridge, smooth but dangerous,

hoping my clawed toes wouldn’t catch the ice.

Now here’s Cedar, where I wait for the light,

with dog walkers and Moms with strollers,

letting them leave me behind as I dawdle

half in the present, half in the past,

able to hear the roar of the airplanes

flying low over the lake as they approach runways

only if I make an effort, the noise so familiar

it might be thirty years ago or now.

I follow the path up the only hill to a spot

where I can see the whole footprint-shaped lake

with the crown of downtown skyscrapers

hovering like Oz on the horizon,

then down again to a hidden spit of beach

where the wind whips up some waves into froth

imitating the ocean I once longed to cross,

and did, again and again—but now I’m back.

A wild gabbling startles me.   I look up.

Geese fill the air.  Today’s flocks, having rested,

are heading down to their winter demesnes,

preparing to cross the miles of America

south of here, the wet lands and state parks

where it’s true, hunters doze with binoculars

in the woods, but where others, like you,

looking out your kitchen window at dawn,

thrill to the vast deep moan of their migration.