Quill & Parchment:Tres Letras/Three Letters

Tres Letras/Three Letters
by Mariano Zaro

English translation by Alicia Vogl Sáenz
Illustrations by Jorge Pérez Muñoz
60 pages/ Bilingual poem in 15 segments
Publisher: Walrus/Morsa; Bilingual edition
Language: English, Spanish
ISBN-10: 8493754188
ISBN-13: 978-8493754181

Review

With its memories of memories and wistful recalls, Three Letters is not the work of a fledgling poet.
It comes from someone who has lived, remembered and regretted. And may or may not have settled.
Using words as economically as ever, Zaro tells a big story in thirteen parts. Long ago lovers revisit
an interrupted passion. Placed in ordinary settings familiar to them a hotel room, a café, a city street,
a stretch of beach they move from place to place, reminding, rekindling, and rethinking. And though
told crisply (Zaro says so much in so little words), the poem is beautifully expansive, living outside
the bounds of ordinary time whether it be measured in fifteen years, five days, or a few moments. It's
ethereal, very intimate, and quietly heartrending. Three Letters is also hopeful. Engaging but open
ended, it sends the lovers back to respective knowable lives and wholly unwritten futures.
–From the Foreword by Patrick Folliard

About the Author

Mariano Zaro is the author of three previous poetry books: Where From/Desde Donde (Bay Books,
Santa Monica), Poems of Erosion/Poemas de la erosión (Carayan Press, San Francisco) and The House
of Mae Rim/La casa de Mae Rim (Carayan Press, San Francisco). His poems appear in New Baroque, LA
Melange, River’s Voice , Askew, The Seattle Muse, Badlands, Al Aire Nuevo and Luces y Sombras. He
has translated American poets Philomene Long, Alicia Vogl Sáenz, Sarah Maclay, Marie Lecrivain and
Michelle Mitchel-Foust. As a fiction writer, his short stories have been featured in several literary journals
del gorrión, Caracola, The Louisville Review, Poeticdiversity, The Baltimore Review, Pinyon, Magnapoets,
Poeticdiversity, The Baltimore Review, Pinyon, Magnapoets, Portland Review and The Palo Alto Review..
In 2004 he received the Roanoke Review Short Fiction Prize

M. Zaro was born in Borja (Spain) in 1963 and has lived in Santa Monica, California since 1994. He earned a
Master's degree in Spanish Literature from the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and a Ph. D. in Linguistics
from the University of Granada (Spain). He teaches Spanish at Rio Hondo College.

From the Book:
(Excerpt)

Te espero

en el mismo hotel

de Barcelona

después de quince años.    

Me visto esa mañana

camino

tomo un taxi

cruzo calles

ensayo qué decirte

te imagino.

    I wait for you

in the same hotel

Barcelona

fifteen years later.    

That morning I dress

walk

take a taxi

cross streets

rehearse what I will say

I imagine you.

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