This was an unexpectedly beautiful book. I usually like to know everything about a book before going in, but I think there isn't much to say about this book other than the fact that it has absolutely beautiful prose. It considers the topic of women in translation through the perspective of a mother who is engrossed by a certain poet and her poem.
I definitely think the first half of the book is much stronger than the second half (which is more history-focused and tends towards info dumpy), but I still thoroughly enjoyed it!


favorite quotes:
* reading balances the strange equation of such moments — it always feels pleasing to sit and give a little more of myself away, especially if i can simultaneously take in a little more of her life. (10%)
* as i clean, my labor makes of itself an invisibility. if each day is a cluttered page, then i spend my hours scrubbing its letters. in this, my work is a deletion of a presence. (11%)
* Like my housework, the results of my translation are often imperfect, despite my devotion. I forget to swipe the hoover under a chair, or i spend hours washing windows and still leave smears. i often ignore cobwebs. i often stumble. i continue anyway. (13%)
* no, my favorite element hovers beyond the text, in the untranslatable pale space between stanzas, where I sense a female breath lingering on the stairs, still present, somehow, long after the body has hurried onwards to breathe elsewhere. (13%)
* here, a name is never simply a name. the “Dubh” in Eibhlin Dubh — the darkness in her — comes from her mother. I wonder what darkness i may leave embedded in my daughter. (39%)