El vuelo interminable / The Never-Ending Flight (The Margaret Randall Poetry)

In El vuelo interminable / The Never-Ending Flight, Eduardo Joly narrates (in poems in both English and Spanish) his experiences following the Austral Airline crash in the Andean Mountain range, a few kilometers from Bariloche, Argentina, in November of 1977. He was on that flight on his honeymoon. He survived; his wife did not. Joly's life, from the moment of the plane crash, became a never-ending flight, one that fails to land. Yet, following the tragedy, he managed not only to continue living but to do so in a way that includes personal joy and gives back to society. It is as if he is following two paths on a map simultaneously: one moving through that territory he has been able to salvage-physically, psychologically, emotionally-and the other the body memory of an experience which will always be with him. These poems emerged in two languages: sometimes in Spanish, others in English, at times bilingually. Joly then translated the work into both languages, and both are presented here, side by side, demonstrating the art of translating lived experience into sparse and powerful language.