Born in 1951 in Mexico City, Coral Bracho has published half a dozen books of poems including the groundbreaking El ser que va a morir (1982) which changed the course of Mexican poetry. Her exquisite long-lined poems evoke the sensual realm where logic is disbanded, wonder evoked. In the words of her translator Forrest Gander, "Her diction spills out along ceaselessly shifting beds of sound....Bracho's poems make sense first as music, and music propels them."

From her early collections—Bajo el destello liguido and El ser—to her most recent books La voluntad del ámbar and Ese espacio, ese jardin (which won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize), Firefly under the Tongue offers the first book of English translations by this most important and influential living poet.

Translated by: Forrest Gander