#spanish poetry

[feral-ballad]

Dulce María Loynaz, tr. by James O’Connor, from Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems

[Text ID: “There is still one difference left between us. You have a tenderness grown weary and I have a weariness grown tender.”]

[mournfulroses]

Ramón Buenaventura Sánchez, tr. by Gabriella Sweet, from "Love's Free Slave,"

[vitamin-sea-mia]

Umbrío casi bruno...

Thistles, sorrows oppose me their crown,thistles, sorrows their leopards incite meand they don't leave me any good bone.My person will not be able to handle the painsurrounded by sorrows and thistles:how much pain to die one. Miguel Hernández

[quetzalnoah]

[babylon-crashing]

tía

“Surrealism is only shocking to those who are shocked by dreams,” André Breton.

Scads of old wounds, tía. Scads. El viento

muere/ en mi herida. “The wind dies/ in

my wound.” And in the blood, tía, its slow

flow, a queer smear. Horror under the skin.

Horror that keeps itching. Alejandra,

tía, I'll still be your your fag hag that keeps

you from the night that gnaws and, mendiga,

begs in your blood. Infernal stone that weeps.

Sugar crusts. The crunch and chew of language.

An itch. A witch. I cannot stop, auntie,

I call you all: Necromancer of words

and wounds. This scar? Where I pulled my innards

out. Where I washed my old wound in the sea

and used your name as its heinous bandage.

Notes.

If Federico Garcia Lorca would be my uncle, then please let Alejandra Pizarnik be my aunt. These two poets taught me more about the craft than anyone else. And yes, I use the term craft as in the dark Dionysian powers of the psyche and soul. Pizarnik wrote in fragments, as the language she used drove her insane. Artistically, she is sister to Paul Celan, who wrote in German and committed suicide by drowning in the Seine. Language as virus. Language as plague. The poem of hers I use is, “El viento muere en mi herida./ La noche mendiga mi sangre.”

[fawnaura]

Your laughter is the sharpest sword, conqueror of flowers and larks. Rival of the sun. Future of my bones and of my love.

Miguel Hernández, Last Poems from Prison (1939-1941) from “Lullaby of the Onion” (dedicated to his son, after receiving a letter from his wife in which she said she had nothing to eat but bread and onions) tr. by Don Share

[nornsfate]

— Federico García Lorca, Romance Sonámbulo

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

Sometimes while pulling books for a class something will catch my eye. This book Romance de la Guardia Civil Espanola or The Ballad of the Spanish Civil Guard, by Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca, published by The Janus Press, Newark, Vermont, 1974, was pulled for a upper level Spanish course. The woodcuts by American printmaker, Jerome Kaplan (1920-1997) are what caught my eye. 

As an artist-printmaker I am drawn to prints that embrace the qualities of the matrix. I see Kaplans woodcuts as a celebration of the medium. He does not overpower the wood and force it to be something that it is not; the grain of the wood and the mark of the gouge are embraced. These woodcuts powerfully express the sorrow and drama of the conflict in the poem and the poems’ nocturnal motif. 

This book was designed and printed by Clair Van Vliet at her Janus Press. The type was set in 18 point Monotype Spectrum by Nancy Boylen and printed on Mohawk Superfine Vellum paper in an edition of 300 copies, and bound by Jim Bicknell. The edition is signed by the artist and our copy has a signed presentation inscription from Claire Van Vliet to our friend and benefactor Jerry Buff, who donated this book to us from his extensive collection.

View more works printed by Claire Van Vliet at her Janus Press.

View more Staff Picks.

-- Teddy, Special Collections Graduate Intern. 

[kitsch-s]

tan fácil como respiro

tan fácil como sangro

como se fuera brujería

ardiendo como el sol

solamente por ti

todo por ti

solamente por desearte

-burning

[alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry]

So that you will hear me

my words

sometimes grow thin

as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell

for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.

They are more yours than mine.

They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.

You are to blame for this cruel sport.

They are fleeing from my dark lair.

You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,

and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you

to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.

Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.

You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.

Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow me.

Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.

You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace

for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

So That You Will Hear Me by Pablo Neruda

[seasnipper]

– trnsl. by me

[feral-ballad]

Pedro Salinas, tr. by Ruth Katz Crispin, from Memory in My Hands: The Love Poetry of Pedro Salinas; “The voice I owe to you”

[Text ID: “I don’t need time to know / what you are like: we knew / each other like lightning.”]

[mournfulroses]

Lázaro Santana, translated by Constance Sullivan, from a poem titled "The Past,"

[cleopatrachampagne]

“en un beso, sabrás todo lo que he callado”

in one kiss, you will know all i have left unsaid

[alejandropoeta]

Libertad Poética

Mi poesía es mi libertad; voz completa y sin ambages libre de hablar de la belleza o dar espacio a la fealdad. No debe lealtad a nadie ni peajes ha de pagar; ronda libre mi conciencia por la página que he de publicar.

Mi poesía no es correcta sino que es libre de verdad, baila el tango con la muerte pues no teme su amistad. No se inclina a la codicia, superstición del capital; cuerpo y alma beneficia matando al facismo espiritual.

Mi poesía no es la perla que a los cerdos se ha de dar: toma vida cuando al verla tiernos ojos la pueden apreciar. No le importa lo que digan quienes quieren criticar las palabras que se elevan, ofrendas de la vida al altar.

Mi poesía no es esclava ni de ley ni de gravedad; su esperanza no se acaba, raíz firme en la verdad. No se aplaca ni negocia con el dios de la crueldad; es antídoto a la inercia y convoca a revolucionaria                          libertad. _____________________________ Alejandro Fabián

Translation:

Poetic Liberty

My poetry is my liberty, voice complete and unambiguous free to speak about what’s beautiful or to make space for homeliness. It owes loyalty to no-one and no tolls shall it ever pay; my conscience moves freely on the page that I shall publicate.

My poetry is not proper, it is truly free instead; with death, it dances tango, as it fears not to be its friend. It doesn’t bow to greed, the superstition of capital; body and soul it benefits killing spiritual fascism.

My poetry is not a pearl to be cast before swine: it comes to life when it is seen by tender eyes that dwell on it.  It doesn’t care what is said by those who want to criticize the words that rise, offerings at the altar of life.

My poetry is no slave neither of law nor of gravity; it’s hope has no end, firmly rooted in the truth. It will not be placated             nor will it negotiate with the god of cruelty; it is antidote to inertia and calls to revolutionary                               liberty.

[milo-the-crotonian]

Flamenco 1: The Blaze

•TW: Violence during Historical Happenings in Unpleasant times

Crack—knap the flint and steel,

Tinder combusts and throws

Shadows to the vault

Of a secluded mosque.

Can you make out the blows

Of Spain and the Taifas!

Torch the roads and conquer

Untamed, thefted domains—

Toil their tillage,

Denounce their stake and soul,

Thrust tulwars on their claim

For them to go depart!

Distant troubles shake—stir

Events that cause at night

Towering, rage-filled

Holocaust from our hate:

As the far wails of wives

Drown beneath our own flames.

Dizzy from upheaved dust,

The Shepherd Star flitters

Down as an angel

Does to amend bloodshed—

Human follly blisters

Onto wounds untreated