The following is a post by Catalina Gómez, Reference Librarian and Curator of the PALABRA Archive in the Latin American, Caribbean and European Division, and is the first of two guest blogs on the successful launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper mission—look for the second at the end of the week!
NASA’s highly-anticipated Europa Clipper Mission launched yesterday, with US Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s poem “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa” engraved onto one the spacecraft’s vault plates. In celebration of the launch and the last day of Hispanic Heritage Month, we invite you to listen to a reading and conversation with Limón and Puerto Rican poet and translator Roque Raquel Rivera, who translated “In Praise of Mystery” into Spanish.
Moderated by Catalina Gómez, a reference librarian in the Hispanic Reading Room and the Curator of PALABRA, this recording includes a bilingual reading of the poem—with Limón reading the original version and Rivera reading his translation. After, Limón and Rivera reflect on their process and on the uniqueness and expansive scope of the project.
Check out the video of the Poet Laureate’s unveiling of the poem which took place at the Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium on June 1, 2023, and other digital treasures from the PALABRA Archive.
The PALABRA Archive has been curated by the Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room since its founding in 1943 and continues to incorporate voices of contemporary literary figures. Throughout its history, writers such as Nobel Laureates Gabriel García Márquez, Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistral, Miguel Ángel Asturias and Juan Ramón Jiménez have been recorded for the collection, as well as other notable figures such as Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar.
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There is also a fabulous children’s picture book, just issued this month, with the illustrated text of the poem. How about a version in Spanish?