This post is also available in: Español (Spanish)

Clarice Lispector’s short story “Amor” takes us from the quotidian life of a married woman into an emotional and sensory explosion where the smallest details are magnified into sensuous monstrosity and compassion (here’s a Spanish translation of the original story, and a partial translation of Torres’ work in Catalán). This work explores these moments in 52 short poems that saturate the senses with rich color, video, text, and sound while focusing our attention on Lispector’s luscious words through scheduled arrangement of lines on the window and a voice reading the poem aloud. The reader can move and rearrange texts and trigger the voice reading a line by clicking on it— essentially being able to create a new poem from the lines— but it feels like a distraction from the impressive work that has already been done by Torres. Perhaps he wished to make us complicit in this “plagiotropic” poetic reinscription of Lispector’s story.
Featured in Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 2.