Silvia Curbelo was born in Matanzas, Cuba, and emigrated to the U.S. with her family as a child. Her collection Falling Landscape will be published by Anhinga Press in 2015. She is also the author of three other poetry collections,The Secret History of Water (Anhinga Press), The Geography of Leaving (Silverfish Review Press), and Ambush (Main Street Rag Publishers).
She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Cintas Foundation and the Writer’s Voice, as well as the Jessica Noble Maxwell Memorial Poetry Prize from American Poetry Review.
Full of feathers and stone, silence and song, Falling Landscape appears to have been crafted from "the vestige of some/elemental language." With a knack for disguising wisdom as plain-spoken observation, Curbelo's poems are infused with insight the way sunlight fills a quiet room. The lyric voice is rarely this accessible, this unwavering, this pure. -- Campbell McGrath
Silvia Curbelo's poetry is accomplished, daring, full of energy and intelligence; it is the generous manifestation of an authentic and original gift. Her poems embody imaginative honesty and a free-ranging and fresh sensibility. I think they should be welcomed and read with care. -- W.S. Merwin
Before the Long Silence
Some words open dark wings
inside us. They carry us off
in the telling, the air going on
beyond language, beyond breath.
It's the small moments
that change everything.
On the last night my father
woke from a long, restless sleep
and pointed to a corner
of the room. A bird, he said.
Fall
It was a wing, it was a kiss,
soft as a word, or as breath
in the middle of a word. It moved
through the air like smoke then fell
as quietly and deliberately
as any falling thing, a word,
a wing, a leaf, or sunlight
falling through leaves, heavier
than air, the way music
falls sometimes, or wind
after a storm has cleared.
But it was softer than that
really, like new snow falling
on the still-green grass by the side
of the road, or a certain kind of silence.
I thought there were clouds
in the distance. I thought
I saw an olive tree, or a birch, maybe.
I thought there was wind
and branches moving overhead
and the birds knew me.
It was a wing, a word, a blade, a kiss.
It was a song, it was a kind of singing
as if somewhere someone was singing
and I could hear the air moving
through it, that perfect rushing sound
like blood rushing over bone.
But it was more than breath, more than
music really, the vestige of some
elemental language suspended
in space, then falling the way a leaf
falls, or a voice, any voice.
I thought it called out to me.
I thought it said my name
in the pure reverence of light
and air, right where I stood,
the rain sinking its small
bright teeth into the earth.
But it wasn't rain, it was not
that kind of falling, not
rain, not a stone, never a stone
though I could feel the weight of it
the way a stone has weight
and texture, and language, and a voice.
And if I leaned my ear against
the trembling mouth of it
I could hear my own name softly
falling, a shining, falling thing
like a coin or a wish. It was
that real. It was in the air,
still falling.
Van K. Brock Florida Poetry Series (1997)
This is a compelling first collecton of necessary poems. -- Carolyn Forche
Throughout, her precise, surprising language serves the mysteries of her subject matter. This is a wonderful debut. -- Stephen Dunn
Silvia Curbelo's poetry is accomplished, daring, full of energy and intelligence. -- W.S. Merwin
Photograph of My Parents
I like the way they look together
and how simply her smile floats towards him
out of the dim afterglow
of some memory, his hand
cupped deliberately
around the small flame
of a match. In this light
nothing begins or ends
and the camera's pale eye
is a question that answers itself
in the asking. Are you there?
And they are. Behind them
the wind tears down and blows
apart, angel of nonchalance.
The world belongs to the world.
For years he smoked down to the filters
sorting out the pieces of his life
with the insomniac's penchant
for detail. In the heart's
heavy forest, the tree of self-denial,
the bough, the single leaf
like the blade of a word held back
for a long time. The moment
she leans towards him the room
will become part of the story.
The light is still as a pond.
My mother's blue scarf
is the only wave.
Drinking Song
In every half-filled glass a river
begging to be named, rain on a leaf,
a snowdrift. What we long for
precedes us. What we've lost
trails behind, casting
a long shadow. Tonight
the music's sad, one man's
outrageous loneliness detonated
into arpeggios of relief. The way
someone once cupped someone's
face in their hands, and the world
that comes after. Everything
can be pared down to gravity
or need. If the soul soars with longing
the heart plunges headfirst
into what's left, believing
there's a pure want
to fall through. What we drink to
in the end is loss, the space
around it, the opposite
of thirst, its shadow.
