In this revised and expanded version of an essay that originally served as an introduction to Ex Voto: Poems of Adélia Prado (Tupelo Press 2013) renowned poet and translator Ilya Kaminsky examines the embodied religious devotion of one of Brazil's greatest poets asking what it means to be a mystic in our time. The chapbook also includes an uncollected Prado translation by Ellen Doré Watson.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa former Soviet Union in 1977 and arrived in the United States in 1993 when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press) which won the Whiting Writer's Award the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award and the Dorset Prize.

The recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship the Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize Kaminsky is the co-editor of The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry an anthology of 20th-century poetry in translation. Kaminsky teaches English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University. His second poetry collection Deaf Republic is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.