Tobacco Dogs / Perros de tabaco

Poetry. Translated from the Spanish by Alexis Levitin. Bilingual edition. Goya's Perro Semihundido, found on the cover of this book, is the most poignant depiction of the human condition I have ever encountered. The universe is reduced to mounting dark earth seemingly on the verge of engulfing a small, half-hidden creature, while the background offers nothing but a curtain of greenish-grey hopelessness. This is not just one small dog. It is each of us waiting to be swallowed by the earth, surrounded by a universe that says nothing. Ana Minga is always on the side of the beaten, the down-trodden, the marginalized, all beings threatened by dissolution and death, whether mongrel dogs or incarcerated lunatics. Her last published book Pajaros huérfanos (Orphaned Birds) is set in an insane asylum, where she spent time doing research as both journalist and poet. Many of those painfully inventive, at times fantasmagoric poems, appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Vol.16; No. 2. But that is another book. For the moment, let us be content with this grim vision, originally titled Behind God's Back. Let us think of Hieronymus Bosch. Let us think of Francis Bacon. Let us think of Goya. These, to my mind, are her anguished compatriots.