Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Beatriz Hausner

Description

Juxtaposing the diction of surrealism with Ovid, Callimachus, and popular music—punk and new wave—the poems in Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart concern themselves with various aspects of Eros.

From wistful romance to explicit sex, these poems are inspired by the troubadour poets of Provence and Italy, and invoke such historical figures as the Byzantine Empress Theodora and her husband, Emperor Justinian, not to mention the Countess of Dia—Beatriz—a major poet of the troubadour tradition; these are Hausner’s “alter voices,” expressing permutations of presence, absence, conquest, and loss.

Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart reaches back through the millenia to create an unexpected, unconventional, and contemporary exploration of one of humanity’s oldest pleasures.

Praise for Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart:

“Elegant, thirsty and visionary poems, echoing with song. Hausner works at the height of her clairaudient powers, depicting the beloved ‘shackled to strange furniture’ to satisfy a relentless, engulfing, transhistorical love.”
—Tamara Faith Berger, author of Queen Solomon

“Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart has a timeless quality to it, slipping between chronologies and myths, simultaneously celestially large and at the scale of a single goosebump. The erotics at its core are epic, musical, sensual, all the while never losing the intimacy of a couple straddling their tandem pains and pleasures. The rituals of this text scale mountain ranges and swim the depths of oceans, then burst forward into swirling dances of tongues, of language and sex, ecstatic and celebratory.” —Aaron Tucker, author of Irresponsible Mediums

“In Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Beatriz Hausner fingers and tongues a history of eroticism, tracing the transformative power of sexuality. This sensual poetic saga leaps through the Byzantine boudoirs of Callimachus, Ovid, and Dante; visits the chambers of Beatritz, Countess of Dia, and Gwendolyn, moon-goddess; riffs new-wave lyrics by Bowie, Costello, the Pretenders; then dances into the orgasmic elegies, joys and afflictions of the erotically-charged Empress Theodora, while planting a poetic heart in your mouth.” —Karl Jirgens, Editor, Rampike

Press Coverage:

Most Anticipated: Spring 2020 Poetry Preview —49th Shelf

29 Works of Canadian Poetry to Watch for in Spring 2020 —CBC Books

Poets in Profile: Beatriz Hausner —Open Book

Launchpad: Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, by Beatriz Hausner —49th Shelf

Chappy Hour: Morning Star Cocktail + Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart —All Lit Up

Limbs, Limits, Love: A review of Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart  —Neil Surkan, Canadian Literature

Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including The Wardrobe Mistress, Sew Him Up, and Enter the Raccoon. Selected poems and chapbooks of hers have been published internationally and translated into several languages. Hausner is a respected historian and translator of Latin American Surrealism, with recent essays published in The International Encyclopedia of Surrealism in 2019. Her translations of César Moro, the poets of Mandrágora, as well as essays and fiction by legends like Aldo Pellegrini and Eugenio Granell have exerted an important influence on her work. Hausner’s history of advocacy in Canadian literary culture is also well known: she has worked as a literary programmer and was Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She is currently President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada, a position she held twice before. Hausner was born in  Santiago, Chile, and came to Canada with her family as a teenager. She now lives in Toronto.