Blue Like My Beloved

‘Be all in, body and soul, ’ Mira advises, clear-sighted in her fidelity to Krishna. Blue Like My Beloved captures the world of Mirabai with such poignancy and attentiveness that we, as readers, fall tenderly into its lyricism, its unabashed ferocity, and the delight of watching Mira ‘serve her beloved Mountain Lifter.’ Yet she is herself a lifter of mountains–of Hari, of the deepest wisdom that frees her to teach us, who struggle to love, how to dwell inwardly with the fervor of sentient ardor. Martinez’s translation is illuminating in the way it both preserves and modernizes the power of Mira’s devotional lyrics to their deepest radiance. What a gift this translation is!–Prageeta Sharma
Rarely does a book of translations bring to life a unique voice from a distant time and place. The task requires scholarship of the highest order, decades of engagement with the text, and unusual poetic skill. Chloe Martinez, with all of these in hand, gives us the poems of Mirabai, the famous sixteenth century bhakti saint of India, who turned her back on royal life and aristocratic marriage to hit the road and devote herself entirely to the love and worship of Lord Krishna. A unique figure among the bhakti poets, Mira’s songs and poems embody her single-minded devotion to her divine beloved Krishna–Lifter of Mountains. Martinez’s deft translation makes Mira’s blend of spiritual diction and street talk, ecstasy and desperation, snark and grief, land here in English with beauty and bite.–Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
Mira becomes the voice of the oppressed people just as the bhaktas [devotees] become Mira through their singing.–Parita Mukta “Shard of Memory”
Mira sang because she could not help singing. Her songs well forth straight from the heart.–Mahatma Gandhi
Mirabai’s poems are the most quoted and her life story the best known of all the North Indian saints.–Wendy Doniger “The Hindus”

Chloe Martinez is a poet, a translator, and a scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection Ten Thousand Selves and the chapbook Corner Shrine, and co-editor, with Lisa Van Orman Hadley, of Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD. She is the recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Literature and the Anne Frydman Prize for her translations of Mirabai. Martinez is the assistant editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and works at Claremont McKenna College.

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