Source of book: I own this
The Library of America has been on a roll the last few years, bringing back into print many works by women and people of color that have been unjustly neglected during my lifetime. One of the ones that I have been particularly enjoying is the anthology of poetry by African Americans. So, you can bet that when they came out with a sister anthology featuring Latino poets, I was all over it.
This collection is edited and selected by Rigoberto Gonzalez, a native of Bakersfield, and a well-respected writer and teacher.
For purposes of this book, Gonzalez has defined “Latino” as poets whose nationality or ancestry is one of the independent Latin American countries, plus Puerto Rico - places that were once part of the Spanish empire. He has chosen to exclude the Portuguese empire (Brazil), French empire (Haiti and others), and British empire (Jamaica and others.) Obviously, those other places have their own rich histories and cultures, and one could see an interesting anthology entirely from the places left out of this book.
The book, as with the other, is divided chronologically into sections. I am continuing my practice of reading one section at a time, so as to more fully immerse myself in the poems, without the pressure to finish all 600 pages before reading other poems.
The first section of this book is called "Antecedents.” It is the most cobbled-together section in the book, including colonial texts documenting the brutality of the era; an excerpt from what is considered the first American (North or South) epic poem from 1610, Historia dela Nueva Mexico by Gaspar Perez de Villagra; part of a play glorifying imperialist actions. Contrasted with these are poems by writers from the early 19th Century, at the time when Latin America was transitioning to independence from Europe. This includes some familiar names, and some unfamiliar ones.
I suspect that the anthology will hit its stride more in subsequent sections, and I look forward to reading those in the future.
The poems are mostly in Spanish, and are presented with the original and the English translation. I don’t really speak Spanish, but I can pronounce it, and pick up some meaning when reading it. The beauty of poetry is in the sounds, not just the meaning, so reading aloud in Spanish is worthwhile.
I thought I would start with the opening of the introduction.
“Latino” is a capacious, unruly, sometimes misunderstood term. There is no one narrative that speaks for all Latinos, nor should there be. So it is with poetry by Latinos: the anthology you hold in your hands goes beyond stereotypes, surface definitions, and fixed categories, embodying the variousness of the Latino poetic tradition. In compiling this anthology, I sought to challenge the usage of Latino as a rubric that, like the metaphorical “melting pot,” homogenizes cultures. Rather I conceived of Latino poetry as a kind of landscape, a communal, open space where many different visions - Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, Afro-Latino, and Indigenous Latino, among others - can flourish. Across these varied expressions, however, I also detected a distinctive way of using language, fusing Anglophone, Hispanic, and Indigenous resonances, as well as a shared embeddedness within interwoven legacies of colonialism and imperialism, and connections to ancestral wellsprings of speech and music. Perhaps above all I was aware of a sense of urgency animating these poems, as political as it is aesthetic, a belief that “poetry is not a luxury,” to borrow a phrase from African American poet Audre Lorde.
It is always fascinating to see what poems appeal to poets, and how a particular editor ties disparate elements together to create a picture.
I read all of the colonialist stuff, but didn’t find anything worth quoting in this post. They are interesting, but definitely dated in outlook. The best parts are the natural descriptions, and the worst the condescending views of native peoples. Worth reading primarily because they are one of the roots of the far better poetry to come.
The first one I want to feature is by Miguel de Quintana, born in Mexico City in the late 17th Century. Much of what we know about him comes from the archives of the local Inquisition, which condemned him as a heretic for his writings challenging church orthodoxy. His one poem in the anthology is quite good. The original Spanish flows better, of course, and rhymes. The English translation by Francisco Lomeli and Clark A. Colahan is still beautiful and meaningful.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
Gain that understanding
That the power of God has given you.
Perfect it, Miguel, and write
For you have in no way strayed.
God’s strength moves you,
And there is no power
That can resist it
Nor make you, Miguel, have qualms.
Very sure is the expression,
Which the great power has given you
Because of your humility,
For God favors you as He does the humble.
Miguel, save and enlighten me,
For I burn on the coals
Of this sea of tears
Which I show to you weeping.
Fear not, for you’re on the right path.
Believe, Miguel, that the priest
Will not question those verses.
Help me, for I implore you.
You are safe from suffering
Any harm or insult, Miguel,
Given what you hold back.
Express it, for I yearn to hear it.
Moving ahead a century, there are a number of poets who wrote moving lyrics. Jose Marti stood out for his longer work Simple Verses. I have chosen a few stanzas that I particularly liked. (These are not in order, each stands alone.)
A sincere man am I
Born where palm treeds grow,
And I long before I die
My soul’s verses to bestow.
No boundaries bind my heart
I belong to every land:
I am art among art,
A peak among peaks I stand.
As if by wings set free,
I’ve seen women’s shoulders rise:
And beauty emerge from debris
In a flight of butterflies.
The jewel esteemed the most?
The value I most revere?
I would of friendship boast
And hold not love so dear.
I know that the foolish may die
With burial pomp and tears
And that no land can supply
The fruit which the graveyard bears.
I also enjoyed the haiku by Jose Juan Tablada, who perhaps represents the cultural fusion which characterizes the best of art and culture throughout the Americas. Octavio Paz considered him an underrated and influential poet. He ran in literary circles after moving to the United States in the early 20th century. I have picked a few that I liked - the Spanish originals are also fascinating. The English versions were translated by A. Scott Britton.
A hundred songs at once;
The musical aviary
Is another tower of babel.
Drops
Of honey from the comb
Each one a bee.
Dragonfly:
Glassy hobnail
With glittering wings.
The garden floor now holds
More dry leaves than the green tree
Ever could in spring.
The heron
Is an arrow in
Flight.
Clear-bright moon
Crossing the spider’s web,
Keeps it awake tonight.
I would be remiss if I didn’t quote one of the handful of poems by William Carlos Williams in this collection. He is one of my favorites, and, amazingly, I do not recall any of the ones here in my other collections.
The Poet and His Poems (I)
The poem is this:
a nuance of sound
delicately operating
upon a cataract of sense.
Vague. What a stupid
image. Who operates?
And who is operated
on? How can a nuance
operate on anything?
It is all in
the sound. A song,
Seldom a song. It should
be a song - made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian - something
immediate, open
scissors, a lady's
eyes - the particulars
of a song waking
upon a bed of sound.
Finally, I will end with longer poem, My Nicaragua, by Salomon de la Selva. The whole poem is a beautiful description of the city on one sees, the part away from the tourists, the real Nicaragua.
My Nicaragua
You take the street on which the large church fronts
And go some twenty blocks and up a hill
And past the three-arch bridge until you come
To Guadalupe, where the houses are
No stately Spanish buildings, flat and lazy,
As in the center of the town you see them —
Heavy with some three centuries upon them,
Accustomed to the sunlight and the earthquakes,
To sudden dawns, long days and sudden sunsets,
Half bored, you fancy, by these ways of nature —
But little things, ugly almost, and frail,
With low red roofs and flimsy rough-cut doors,
A trifle better than an Indian hut,
Not picturesque, just dreary commonplace —
As commonplace and dreary as the flats
Here, in your cities, where your poor folks live —
And yet, you notice, glad the sun is shining,
And glad a cooling wind begins to blow,
Too glad, too purely, humbly glad to say it;
And all the while afraid of the volcanoes,
Holding their breath lest these should wake to crush them.
Look through these doors and see the walls inside
With holy pictures, saints and angels, there,
Sold to my people, reverenced by them;
Look through these doors and see the children, playing
Or wrangling, just as children will elsewhere;
Look through these doors and see the women, sewing,
Setting their tables, doing the thousand things
Hardly worth noticing, that women do
Around their houses, meaning life to them.
And if you listen you may hear them singing —
Not anywhere are better songs than theirs.
It’s nothing thrilling! Tourists do not care,
And if you hire a common guide he’ll never
Think of directing you, to see this mere
Unhonored dailiness of people’s lives
That is the soil the roots of beauty know.
Yet, if you wish to know my country — it’s there.
The old Cathedral that the Spaniards built,
With hand-carved altars for two thousand saints;
The ruined fortress where they say that Nelson,
Who was a pirate then, lost his left eye
Fighting a woman, all that tourists see —
That’s what my country used to be, not now.
The “dear” hotel, with palm-trees in the courtyard,
And a self-playing piano drumming rags;
The shops of German, English and French owners;
The parlors of the ruling class, adorned
With much the same bad taste as in New York —
That’s not my country either! But the rows
Of ugly little houses where men dwell,
And women — all too busy living life
To think of faking it — that is my country,
My Nicaragua, mother of great poets.
And when you see that, what? Just this: Despite
Newspaper revolutions and so forth,
The different climate and the different
Traditions and the different grandfathers,
My people are pretty much the same as yours:
Folks with their worries and their hopes about them,
Working for bread and for a something more
That ever changes, hardly twice the same;
Happy and sad, the very joy and sorrow
Your people feel; at heart just plainly human:
And that is worth the journey to find out.
That could apply to these poems as well. It is worth the journey to find out…
I definitely look forward to reading and savoring the rest of this collection.
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