The Poet as Translator, The Translator as Creator: A Conversation with Francisco Aragón on Gerardo Diego’s “Handbook of Foams”

Interview by Rey M. Rodríguez

Few contemporary poets and translators have done more to bridge the literary traditions of Latin America, Spain, and the United States than Francisco Aragón. Poet, editor, translator, and longtime director of Letras Latinas at the University of Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, Aragón has spent decades championing bilingual and multilingual literary cultures. His recent translation of Handbook of Foams by Spanish poet Gerardo Diego introduces English-language readers to one of the defining works of Creacionismo, the avant-garde movement often associated with Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro and the artistic revolutions of the early twentieth century.

In this conversation, Aragón reflects on his evolution as a poet, the formative influence of Ishmael Reed, Robert Pinsky, and others, the challenges and pleasures of translation, and why poetry remains, above all else, a bodily art.

Before we discuss Handbook of Foams, I'd like to begin with your own literary journey. How did poetry first enter your life?

I arrived at poetry almost accidentally.

When I was a student at UC Berkeley, I knew that I loved language. My favorite courses in high school had always been English and literature, so once I got to college, I decided to try a creative writing workshop. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to write fiction or poetry, so I applied to both introductory courses, which required submitting a writing sample. Curiously enough, I was rejected from the fiction workshop and accepted into the poetry workshop. In a sense, then, the decision was made for me.

My first poetry teacher was Ishmael Reed, and I cannot overstate how influential that experience was. What I appreciated most was his commitment to exposing students to a wide range of voices. Through him, I encountered poets such as Victor Hernández Cruz, Garrett Hongo, and Gary Soto for the first time. He understood that literature becomes richer when we broaden our understanding of who gets to speak.

At the same time, I joined the editorial staff of the Berkeley Poetry Review. That experience was just as important as the workshop itself. We read submissions from around the country, solicited work from poets we admired, and learned how poems functioned in a larger literary ecosystem.

Those two experiences—studying poetry with Ishmael Reed and working on a literary journal—formed the foundation of everything that followed.

After decades as a poet, editor, and translator, how do you define poetry today?

I keep returning to the idea of pleasure.

People write about whatever obsesses them—love, politics, grief, memory—but what continues to matter to me is the pleasure and play of language itself. If language isn't doing something engaging, something surprising, then even compelling subject matter can lose its force.

At this stage in my life, I think of language as an instrument. Poetry isn't simply communication; it's an experience. We encounter it through the ears, through the mouth, through the body.

One of my teachers at Berkeley was Robert Pinsky, who often described poetry as a bodily art, no less bodily, he would say, than dancing. I've never forgotten that. Poetry requires breath. It requires sound. Even silent reading activates the body in subtle ways.

So for me, poetry remains, fundamentally, an oral and physical art.

Your translation of Gerardo Diego's Handbook of Foams introduces readers to Creacionismo. How does Diego embody the principles of that movement?

Any discussion of Creacionismo has to begin, in my view, with Vicente Huidobro.

Huidobro famously declared, at the conclusion of a poem, "El poeta es un pequeño dios"—"The poet is a little god." That line captures the movement's central belief: the poet's task is not merely to describe reality but to create new realities.

The poem becomes its own autonomous world.

Rather than reflecting what already exists, the poet invents relationships, images, and possibilities that have never existed before. The movement shares affinities with Cubism and Surrealism, both of which were questioning inherited ideas about representation.

What appeals to me about Diego is that he embodies these ideas playfully. His poems continually surprise us. They remind us that language can make things happen rather than simply report them.

One of the things your introductory essay does particularly well is move beyond definitions and into experience. Readers may understand Creacionismo intellectually, but your essay suggests that these poems must also be felt. Is there a poem from Handbook of Foams that best illustrates what Diego was trying to accomplish?

Absolutely.

One of the poems from the collection I often return to when discussing Creacionismo is "Panorama." It's a poem I encountered while sitting in a café in Madrid shortly after someone suggested I read Gerardo Diego. At the time, I knew very little about him, but I immediately sensed that something unusual was happening.

And so, perhaps one way to dive into this could be to share the poem. So why don't I do that?

Love it.

I'll go stanza by stanza, first in Spanish, then in English. Here's “Panorama.”

El cielo está hecho con lápices de colores 
Mi americana intacta no ha visto los amores
Y nacido en las manos del jardinero
el arco iris riega los arbustos exteriores

The sky’s done up with crayons.
My spotless jacket hasn't gazed upon love 
and arcing from the gardener's hands
rainbows water the outdoor shrubs

Un pájaro perdido anida en mi sombrero

A lost bird nests in my hat

Las parejas de amantes marchitan el parquet

The pared-off lovers wear down the parquet

Y se hoy en débilmente las órdenes de Dios
que juega consigo mismo al ajedres

And you barely hear God's instructions
playing chess against himself

Los niños cantan por abril.
La nube verde y rosa ha llegado a la meta
Yo he visto nacer flores 
entre las ojas del atril
y al casador futivo matar una cometa

Children, sing for April
Green and rosy clouds reached the finish
I've seen flowers emerge 
from between the pages on a music stand
and a hidden hunter slay a kite

En su escenario nuevo ensaya el verano.
y en un rinco del paisaje
la lluvia toca el piano.

Summer rehearses on its new stage
and in a corner of the countryside 
the rain is playing the piano.

I remember reading that in Spanish only, whispering it to myself in that cafe, and just being, wow, I didn't know poetry could do that.

Rather than describing a recognizable landscape, the poem constructs an entirely new reality. The sky is transformed into an artistic object. Rainbows emerge from unexpected places. Birds nest in hats. Clouds become participants in a race. Rain sits down at a piano and begins to play.

What struck me was not any single image but the cumulative effect of those images.

Certainly.

The poem opens with an image that immediately announces its intentions. Diego writes that the sky applies its make-up with colored pencils. A few lines later, a rainbow waters shrubs from the gardener's hands. Elsewhere, a lost bird nests in the speaker's hat.

As the poem unfolds, we encounter lovers, clouds, flowers, hunters, kites, and finally one of the poem's most memorable images: rain playing the piano in a corner of the countryside.

What is remarkable is that none of these images are presented as metaphors that require decoding. They exist as realities within the poem's universe.

And that is where Creacionismo enters?

Exactly.

When Vicente Huidobro insisted that the poet should create rather than describe, this is what he meant.

The poet is not reporting on the world. The poet is making a world.

In "Panorama," Diego is not asking whether rain can literally play the piano. The question is irrelevant. Once the poem creates that reality, our task as readers is to enter it.

Your response to the poem in the essay is one of my favorite moments in the book.

It was such a genuine reaction.

Readers often ask for definitions. Scholars offer theories. But sometimes the most honest response is simply astonishment.

That experience of surprise—that moment when language suddenly exceeds our expectations—is what drew me to Diego in the first place.

In some ways, that seems connected to your own understanding of poetry.

Very much so.

Earlier, we spoke about pleasure and play. "Panorama" embodies both.

The poem is serious in its artistic ambitions, but it is also playful. It delights in invention. It delights in possibility. 

And that delight remains contagious.

My hope is that a century after Diego wrote those lines, readers will encounter the poem and still feel that same sense of discovery.

For me, that's one of the enduring achievements of Handbook of Foams. And once you've experienced that, it's difficult to read poetry in quite the same way again.

One of the strengths of your introductory essay is that it does much more than provide historical background. You place Handbook of Foams at the intersection of several artistic movements and influences—Vicente Huidobro, Cubism, music, Juan Gris, and the broader European avant-garde. Why was it important for you to contextualize Diego so extensively?

Because I think contemporary readers can easily underestimate how radical these poems were when they first appeared.

When readers encounter Handbook of Foams today, they may simply experience the poems as playful or surreal. But in 1922, Diego was participating in a much larger artistic revolution.

The opening essay was my attempt to situate the collection within that moment.

One of the challenges of literary translation is that we are often translating not only a text but an artistic environment. Readers may not immediately know who Vicente Huidobro was. They may not know the relationship between Creacionismo and Cubism. They may not know that Diego was writing while painters, composers, and poets throughout Europe were also questioning inherited ideas about representation itself.

Without that context, some of the poems can appear merely whimsical. With that context, we begin to see them as interventions in a larger artistic conversation.

The essay repeatedly returns to Huidobro.

It has to.

Huidobro is indispensable to understanding Diego's project.

Your essay also emphasizes Diego's encounters with Cubism.

Yes, because Cubism helped provide a visual counterpart to what Huidobro was proposing in poetry.

We know that Diego spent time in Paris with Huidobro shortly before writing the collection. During those weeks, he encountered artists associated with the avant-garde, including Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso.

When Diego returned to Spain and wrote Handbook of Foams, he brought those experiences with him.

One way of understanding the book is to see it as an attempt to achieve with language what Cubist painters were attempting with paint.

Cubism dismantled conventional perspective. It challenged the assumption that an object could be represented from a single viewpoint.

Diego performs a similar operation with language. His poems fracture ordinary perception and reassemble it according to new imaginative principles.

You also devote particular attention to Juan Gris.

Juan Gris appears repeatedly in my essay because Diego himself acknowledged his importance.

The longest poem in the collection, “River Song,” is dedicated to Gris. That fact alone tells us something.

Readers often think of poets influencing poets, but Diego reminds us that poets can be deeply shaped by painters as well.

When I read many of these poems, I sense Diego attempting to compose verbal equivalents of Cubist canvases. He arranges objects, images, and perspectives in ways that invite readers to see the world anew.

In that sense, the poems are visual constructions as much as linguistic ones.

Music also occupies an important place in your introduction.

Music is often overlooked when discussing Diego, but I think it is essential.

Diego was an accomplished pianist. Once we know that, we begin to notice how frequently musical imagery appears throughout the collection.

The poems are attentive to rhythm, movement, improvisation, and tonal variation. Even some of the imagery feels musical. In "Panorama," for example, flowers emerge from a music stand and rain plays the piano.

For Diego, artistic disciplines were speaking to one another. Poetry conversed with painting. Painting conversed with music. Music conversed with poetry.

Part of what I wanted the introduction to demonstrate was that Handbook of Foams emerges from that interdisciplinary conversation.

One thing I admired about the essay is that you resist reducing the poems to historical artifacts.

That's important to me.

Context should illuminate the poems, not imprison them.

I wanted readers to understand the world that produced the book, but I also wanted them to experience the poems as living works of art.

The goal of the introduction was not to tell readers what the poems mean. It was to provide a doorway into the artistic energy that produced them.

Once readers enter that doorway, the poems should be free to work their own magic.

So the opening essay functions almost as a map of influences.

Yes, but not merely a map of influences.

It's a map of artistic conversation.

Huidobro is speaking to Diego.

Juan Gris is speaking to Diego.

Cubism is speaking to poetry.

Music is speaking to painting.

And a century later, Diego is still speaking to us.

The introduction was my attempt to help readers hear those voices before entering the poems themselves.

What first drew you to Diego's work?

I had spent a year in Barcelona as an undergraduate and fell deeply in love with the country. Later, I returned through an NYU graduate program in Madrid. One of the options for our master's thesis was a work of literary translation, which immediately appealed to me because I was already writing poetry and becoming increasingly interested in translation.

The question was: who should I translate?

I knew I wanted to avoid the obvious choices. I wasn't interested in translating poets who had already been translated extensively. One day, a professor suggested Gerardo Diego and specifically recommended Manual de espumas.

I found a copy, sat down in a café in Madrid, and began reading.

I was captivated almost immediately.

One of the recurring images in the collection is foam. How does that image function throughout the book?

Diego wrote the collection during the summer of 1922, shortly after his stint in Paris, as we’ve discussed. 

Afterward, he returned to Spain and spent the summer living in a bungalow on the beach in Gijón.

It's impossible for me not to connect the title to that seaside setting.

Notice that the title is Manual de espumas—Foams, plural. Not one foam, but many foams.

I imagine Diego observing endless variations of the sea, much as Monet painted the same subject under different conditions of light. The foam becomes a way of capturing multiplicity, transformation, and flux.

What's fascinating is that Diego extends the metaphor beyond the ocean. In one poem, foam appears not on a wave but on a cocktail. The image migrates. It evolves. It refuses to remain fixed.

That mobility seems central to the book's aesthetic imagination.

Your discussion of translation often pushes beyond conventional notions of fidelity. How do you think about translation today?

My views have evolved over the years.

When I was younger, I was much more concerned with reproducing the original text as closely as possible. I worried about preserving formal features, replicating effects, and maintaining equivalences.

Now I think differently.

I view translation as a creative act. In fact, I often describe what I do as a form of rewriting. The English-language poem could not exist without the Spanish original, but neither is it merely a copy.

The term I often use, which was first introduced to me by Roberto Tejada, is transcreation.

Translation involves moving across languages, certainly, but it also involves creating. My responsibility is not simply to transfer meaning; it is to write a poem in English that emerges from the original poem.

That doesn't mean abandoning fidelity. It means recognizing that fidelity itself can take many forms.

Can a translation become a new poem?

In some respects, yes.

When I translated my own poems into Spanish for my collection Puerta del Sol, I found myself taking liberties because the poems already belonged to me. Self-translation creates a different relationship to the text.

When translating another writer, however, I remain accountable to the source. The translation depends upon that original poem.

Yet I still think the translated poem possesses its own artistic life. It becomes a new work shaped by another language, another set of cultural assumptions, another music.

That's why I believe translators should be recognized as artists.

Too often translators remain invisible. One reason I remain grateful to Francisco X. Alarcón is that when I translated his work, he insisted my name appear on the cover. He understood that translation is not clerical labor. It is creative labor.

How should contemporary readers approach Diego's work today?

What has struck me most is how contemporary the poems continue to feel.

Recently, I've been organizing readings where poets read a Diego poem alongside one of their own. The results have been remarkable.

At an event in Maryland, poet José Ballesteros wrote an entirely new poem inspired by Diego's use of personification. Diego famously gives agency to rain, clouds, and landscapes, as we saw in “Panorama.” Ballesteros responded by writing a poem in the voice of a cove that longs to become human.

The poem was funny, moving, and completely contemporary.

What fascinated me was realizing that Diego's imagination had traveled across a century and inspired a new creation.

That, too, is a form of translation.

Your afterword, "Mostly Madrid," is filled with literary encounters. Looking back, which poets were most essential to your development?

During my formative years in Berkeley, I benefited from extraordinary teachers and a remarkably vibrant literary culture. Through Ishmael Reed, Robert Pinsky, and Thom Gunn, I encountered a vast range of aesthetics—from Louise Glück and C. K. Williams to Michael Palmer, Robert Duncan, and Jack Spicer.

The Bay Area taught me that poetry is not one thing.

Spain expanded that lesson.

While living there, I had the opportunity to hear Octavio Paz read in Madrid. I heard Rafael Alberti, then in his nineties, reading poems that carried the weight of an entire literary generation. I heard Seamus Heaney in both English and Spanish translation.

Those experiences reminded me that poetry exists not only on the page but in living communities of readers, listeners, and artists.

The poetry bug may have bitten me in Berkeley, but Spain deepened the infection, so to speak.

One of the most moving pieces in the volume is your afterword, "Mostly Madrid." While the book is ostensibly a translation of Gerardo Diego, the essay becomes something much larger: a meditation on literary influence, friendship, travel, and artistic formation. Why was it important for you to include that essay alongside the translations?

Translation doesn't happen in a vacuum. We sometimes imagine a translator sitting alone with a text, making linguistic decisions. But every translation emerges from a lived experience—from particular places, particular encounters, particular obsessions.

The essay allowed me to tell the story behind the translation.

When readers encounter Handbook of Foams, they're encountering a book that first entered my life in Madrid when I was a graduate student. They're also encountering the cumulative experiences that made me receptive to Diego's work in the first place: my years at Berkeley, my encounters with poets, my fascination with Spain, and my growing understanding of translation as a creative practice.

One line from the essay struck me in particular. You write that we encounter certain works of art when we most need them. Looking back now, which poets did you most need?

The answer changes depending on the period of my life.

As a young poet at Berkeley, I needed Ishmael Reed because he expanded my understanding of who could inhabit a poem. I needed Robert Pinsky because he taught me to think seriously about sound and form. I needed Thom Gunn because he connected me to traditions I might not otherwise have encountered.

While living in Spain, I needed different guides.

Hearing Octavio Paz read in Madrid was transformative. Hearing Rafael Alberti—already a legendary figure by then—made literary history feel tangible. And hearing Seamus Heaney reminded me that poetry could be deeply rooted in place while still speaking across cultures.

Your discussion of translation throughout this conversation suggests a much broader definition of the term than many readers might expect.

Yes. I think translation, as I’m trying to suggest, exists on a spectrum.

At one end, we have what people traditionally think of as translation: carrying a poem from one language into another. But there are other forms of translation as well.

When a contemporary poet reads Gerardo Diego and writes a poem inspired by him, that is a kind of translation.

When a painter responds to a poem, that is a kind of translation.

When a reader encounters a poem and carries it into their own life, transforming it through memory and experience, that too is a form of translation.

What interests me is how artistic energy moves from one person to another.

You used the word "transcreation" earlier. It seems central to your philosophy.

The term acknowledges that translation is both transmission and creation.

For years, I worried about fidelity in a very narrow sense. Was I preserving every nuance? Was I reproducing every formal feature? Was I being faithful enough?

Eventually, I realized that absolute fidelity is impossible.

The question became: How do I create a compelling poem in English that remains in meaningful dialogue with the Spanish original?

In other words, the translator becomes a creator.

Absolutely.

A translator, I think, aspires to be a close reader, a critic, a historian, a stylist, and a poet. The work demands technical precision, but it also invention.

When I translated Francisco X. Alarcón, we would literally sit together in cafés and discuss line breaks, rhythms, and tonal shifts. Those conversations taught me that translation is not secondary to writing. It is writing.

That's why I believe translators deserve greater visibility.

Reading your essay, one senses that Handbook of Foams is not simply a translation project but a culmination of decades of reading, travel, friendship, and literary apprenticeship.

I think that's exactly right.

The translation may have begun in a Madrid café, but in another sense it began years earlier in Berkeley. It began with teachers. It began with literary journals. It began with conversations. It began with poetry readings.

Books arrive at particular moments, but the conditions that allow us to recognize their importance are often decades in the making.

That's one of the reasons I wanted to include "Mostly Madrid." It acknowledges that translation is never just about language. It's about a life in literature.

I'd like to return to the final essay in the collection because it offers something readers rarely see. We often talk about translation as an intellectual or artistic undertaking, but the essay reveals the practical realities behind bringing a book into the world. In particular, you describe the process of obtaining permission to translate and publish Diego's work. Why was it important to include that story?

Partly because I wanted readers—especially younger translators—to understand that books do not simply appear.

There is a human story behind every translation.

When people read Handbook of Foams, they see Gerardo Diego's name and my name. What they don't necessarily see are the decades of relationships, correspondence, research, and persistence that made the book possible.

The story also allowed me to reflect on the responsibilities we inherit when we decide to translate a writer.

One of the most remarkable moments in the essay is your encounter with Diego's daughter, Elena Diego.

Yes. It's one of those literary coincidences that seems almost impossible in retrospect.

When I was living in Madrid, one of my closest friends was a retired law professor. As it happened, he lived in the same building as Elena Diego.

At that point, I had already translated several of Gerardo Diego's poems and published them in literary journals. Before returning to the United States, I asked my friend if he might introduce us.

To my surprise, he arranged a meeting.

I brought copies of the translations and showed them to her. I remember explaining that I had only published the English translations, not the Spanish originals. She was gracious and encouraging. More importantly, she said something that stayed with me. She told me that if I ever wanted to publish an entire bilingual edition, we would need to formalize the arrangement.

At the time, it seemed like a distant possibility.

And yet decades later, that conversation became essential.

Years passed. Eventually, I found a publisher, Shearsman Books in England, which was a particularly fitting home because the publisher, Tony Frazer, had himself translated Vicente Huidobro extensively.

We initially contacted the Gerardo Diego Foundation, believing that the rights were controlled there. Months passed. Then more months. Then, nearly a year.

Finally, we received a response directing us to Elena Diego.

I remember thinking, "I wish someone had told us that a year ago."

At that point, I wasn't even sure she was still alive.

But I tracked down an email address, wrote to her, reminded her of our meeting decades earlier, and explained the project. To my delight, she remembered. She immediately granted permission, and the publication process moved forward very quickly after that.

The story feels like more than a rights negotiation. It feels almost like a lesson in literary continuity.

I think that's right.

Translation is often described as carrying a text from one language into another. But there is another dimension that receives less attention.

We are also carrying a literary legacy.

When a poet is no longer alive, the translator becomes one of the custodians of that writer's future readership. That responsibility extends beyond the text itself. It includes families, archives, foundations, publishers, and communities of readers.

In many ways, the process taught me that translation is not only an artistic practice. It is also an act of stewardship.

The essay also returns repeatedly to Francisco X. Alarcón, whose influence seems to hover over much of your career.

Absolutely.

If Gerardo Diego helped me understand the possibilities of literary translation, Francisco X. Alarcón taught me how translation can function as a living relationship.

When I first encountered him at a reading in Berkeley, he was reading from an unpublished Spanish-language manuscript. Afterward, I approached him and asked whether I might translate a few poems for the Berkeley Poetry Review.

That conversation became a friendship that lasted for the rest of his life.

We would sit in cafés together, discussing translations line by line. We would debate rhythm, tone, imagery, and intention. Through those conversations, I learned that translation is not merely linguistic transfer. It is collaboration, listening, and trust.

It sounds as though the final essay is really about literary inheritance.

That's a beautiful way of putting it.

The essay begins as a story about Madrid, about travel and books and literary encounters. But beneath those stories is a deeper question: How do writers find one another across time?

I learned from Francisco X. Alarcón.

I learned from Octavio Paz.

I learned from Rafael Alberti.

I learned from Gerardo Diego.

And now, through translation, I have the opportunity to introduce Diego to readers who might never otherwise encounter him.

That feels less like ownership than participation. We inherit these traditions, we contribute to them in whatever way we can, and then we pass them forward.

For me, that is one of the deepest rewards of translation.

What advice would you offer emerging poets today?

Read widely and read deeply.

And by widely, I don't mean only poetry. Read science. Read history. Read botany. Read philosophy. Read beyond your comfort zone.

Most importantly, pay attention to language itself. Don't read only for information or plot. Read for the pleasures of language.

I would also encourage writers to learn another language if possible. Every language offers a different way of seeing the world. Exposure to multiple literary traditions enlarges one's imagination.

Finally, don't rush.

There is enormous pressure today to publish quickly. Resist it.

Publish individual poems if you wish, but don't assume that your worth as a writer depends upon producing a book by a certain age. Some of the finest poets published their first books in their forties, fifties, or later.

Take the time to become the writer you are capable of becoming.

The work will be stronger for it.

Rey M. Rodríguez has an MFA in fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts. He recently released his debut book of poetry, Todos Somos Sagrados / All Are Sacred (El Martillo Press 2026), and he is working on a novel set in Mexico City.