APRIL
This is National Poetry Month! (About time.)
Poetry is a genre Latinos have excelled in. Think Lorca, Neruda, Paz, Gabriela Mistral, William Carlos Williams, Carmen Tafolla, Juan Felipe Herrera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Victor Hernandez Cruz.
Claribel Alegria, a major voice in Latin American letters, published fifteen collections of poetry. She won the Casa de las Americana poetry prize. She keeps a “seed book” – a collection of ideas, quotes, fragments – which compost and grow into poems. Her poem, Ars Poetica was written during a war in El Salvador. In spite of the horror, something else came.
Ars Poetica
by Claribel Alegria
I,
poet by trade,
condemned so many times
to be a crow,
would never change places
with the Venus de Milo:
while she reigns in the Louvre
and dies of boredom
and collects dust
I discover the sun
each morning
and amid valleys
volcanos
and debris of war
I catch sight of the promised land.
Daisy Zamora, Vice Minister of Culture in Nicaragua, wrote, “Writing poetry is my life. I could not live if I did not write poetry. Poetry is my way of living, a way of feeling life.”
Hand Mirror
by Daisy Zamora
After so many years
my grandmother Ilse returns
with her astonished
dark and melancholy eyes,
and glances
– slender Narcissus –
at her small silver pool,
her magic oval,
her moon of cut glass,
occupying this face
more and more hers
and less mine.
Octavio Paz wrote, “To make life a marvel – that is the role of poetry.”
Between what I see and what I say,
by Octavio Paz
between what I say and what I keep silent,
between what I keep silent and what I dream,
between what I dream and what I forget:
poetry.
August
by Frederico Garcia Lorca
The opposing
of peach and sugar,
and the sun inside the afternoon
like the stone in the fruit.
The ear of corn keeps
its laughter intact, yellow and firm.
August.
The little boys eat
brown bread and delicious moon.
Raphael Campo, Cuban American physician teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He is on the faculty of Lesley University in their MFA program in Creative Writing. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize for starters.
I interviewed Dr. Campo for Water~Stone, a collection of essays and poems produced by Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. In his remarks Campo said, “Poetry conveys a sense of connectedness. I like the idea of a universal message from poetry, from the rhythm which is visceral and deeply ingrained.”
I asked Dr. Campo if listening to the body’s rhythm inform your poetry?
His answer: “Absolutely. The attention of listening is one aspect of poetry that is critically important for me. As in Whitman’s great phrase, I try to sing “the body electric.” Poetry makes it possible to listen with our whole heart.”
My Voice
by Raphael Campo
To cure myself of wanting Cuban songs,
I wrote a Cuban song about the need
For people to suppress their fantasies,
Especially unhealthy ones. The song
Began by making reference to the sea,
Because the sea is like a need so great
And deep it never can be swallowed. Then
The song explores some common myths
About the Cuban people and their folklore:
The story of a little Carib boy
Mistakenly abandoned to the sea;
The legend of a bird who wanted song
So desperately he gave up flight; a queen
Whose strength was greater than a rival king’s.
The song goes on about morality,
And then there is a line about the sea,
How deep it is, how many creatures need
Its nourishment, how beautiful it is
To need. The song is ending now, because
I cannot bear to hear it any longer.
I call this song of needful love my voice.
Gracias Amigos
– Carol Bjorlie