As If: Variations on Enrique Anderson-Imbert

In this eccentric suite of fabulist lyrics, Steven Cramer transforms twenty-one ＂microcuentos＂ by the Argentine writer Enrique Anderson-Imbert (1910-2000) into fresh, epigrammatic poetry. Anderson-Imbert’s magical realism emerges in Cramer’s free verse as an unpredictable fusion of style between European Surrealism and American vernacular. Funny and spooky by turns, these riffs often stray far from the prose originals, adding the textures and junctures unique to verse. Lively with birdsong and music box ballerinas, somber with hospitalized fathers and history’s chess pieces, As If invites us into dream worlds-from the festive to the funereal-we didn’t know we’d imagined.