Spanish and Latin American Poetry

A great way to learn Spanish is through poetry. Hearing the rythym, the cadence, the pauses in between words, the mystery and romance of the Spanish language comes alive. If you don't know Spanish or your just learning the language, read the English version first and then Spanish. Either way, it will be a good way to understand the nuances and subtleties of the Spanish language. Subsequently, you will have enrichened your knowledge not just of Spanish, but of poetry.

Here are some of my favorite Spanish and Latin American poets that I think you will enjoy.

Neruda- Me Gusta Cuando Callas




Neruda- Puedo Escribir los Versos Mas Triste





Garcia Lorca's Poem: Verde Que Te Quiero Verde


Ernesto Cardenal




Machado Recita la Poesia de Ruben Dario



I will be having more blogs on Spanish and Latin American Poets in the future.



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Ruben Dario: Father of Modernism

 Ruben Dario  marks an important shift in the relationship between literary Europe and America. Before him, American literary trends had largely followed European ones; however, Darío was clearly the international vanguard of the Modernist Movement. The poetry we read now in the 21 st century is a mixture of Modernism and Post Modernism.Modernist elements include 1)experimentaion 2) anti-realilsm,
3)individualism, and 4) intellectualism.

Here is a poem Dario wrote in honor of Roosevelt. It is a good example of the intellectualism rife in Modernist poetry.

A ROOSEVELT

Es con voz de la Biblia, o verso de Walt Whitman,

que habría que llegar hasta ti, Cazador!

Primitivo y moderno, sencillo y complicado,

con un algo de Washington y cuatro de Nemrod.

Eres los Estados Unidos,

eres el futuro invasor

de la América ingenua que tiene sangre indígena,

que aún reza a Jesucristo y aún habla en español.

Eres soberbio y fuerte ejemplar de tu raza;

eres culto, eres hábil; te opones a Tolstoy.

Y domando caballos, o asesinando tigres,

eres un Alejandro-Nabucodonosor.

(Eres un profesor de energía,

como dicen los locos de hoy.)

Crees que la vida es incendio,

que el progreso es erupción;

en donde pones la bala

el porvenir pones.

No.

Los Estados Unidos son potentes y grandes.

Cuando ellos se estremecen hay un hondo temblor

que pasa por las vértebras enormes de los Andes.

Si clamáis, se oye como el rugir del león.

Ya Hugo a Grant le dijo: «Las estrellas son vuestras».

(Apenas brilla, alzándose, el argentino sol

y la estrella chilena se levanta...) Sois ricos.

Juntáis al culto de Hércules el culto de Mammón;

y alumbrando el camino de la fácil conquista,

la Libertad levanta su antorcha en Nueva York.

Dario emphasises  the cerebreal aspects of this poem as he alludes to Bacchus,Netzahualcoyotl,Atlantis,Montezuma and Plato.

Nicaragua: Land of Poets

Words should paint the color of sound, the aroma of a star."
Rubén Darío

The very famous and controversial writer Salman Rushdie,  wrote his first non fiction book on Nicaragua, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey, it's about his time in 1986 when he travels all over the country and talks to everyone from the campesino to the politician. He quotes the great poet from Granada, José Coronel Urtecho,who once said that "Every Nicaraguan is a poet until proven otherwise".

All Nicaraguans whether they are the campesino, coffee plantation owner, policeman, lawyer and politician know how to write and recite poetry. Poetry is a national past time, and it's very often that you hear people address each other as in "Hey poet !"

The love of poetry in Nicaragua can be traced back to
Rubén Darío(1867-1916). But before Dario, there were poets like Salomon de la Selva, ( 1893-1959),who was the first Latin American poet to be nominated for the Nobel Prize.Another famous Nicaraguan Poet that also lived in Dario's house at another time was Alonso Cortes. But it was Ruben Dario, otherwise known as the Father of Modernism, who solidified poetry as the country's dominant art form.

Most Nicaraguans have a passion for poetry and young children, beginning in first grade learn to express themselves in poetry and team up with other classmates to recite Ruben Dario's poetry.Margarita Debayle is one of Dario's most famous poems and is most Nicaraguans know it by memory.

Two great poets, Garcia Lorca ( Spain) and Pablo Neruda ( Chile) pay tribute to Ruben Dario in this effervescent and witty dialogue.

Neruda: His red name deserves to be remembered, along with his essential tendencies, his terrible heartaches, his incandescent uncertainties, his descent to the hospitals of hell, his ascent to the castles of fame, his attributes as a great poet, now and forever undeniable.

García Lorca: As a Spanish poet he taught the old and the young in Spain with a generosity and a sense of universality that are lacking in the poets of today. He taught Valle-Inclán and Juan Ramón Jiménez and the Machado brothers, and his voice was water and niter in the furrows of our venerable language. From Rodrigo Caro to the Argensolas or Don Juan Arguijo, Spanish had not seen such plays on words, such clashes of consonants, such lights and forms, as in Rubén Darío. From the landscapes of Velázquez and Goya's bonfire and Quevedo's melancholy to the elegant apple color of the Mallorcan peasant girls, Darío walked the Spanish earth as in his own land.


For such a small country,(the size of New York state) Nicaragua produces more poets and writers, than any other profession.


Here is a list of Nicaraguan Poets

Gioconda Belli,(1948)designated amongst the 100 most important poets during the 20th century.
Claribel Alegría (1924), poet, she received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2006.
Héctor Avellán (1973), poet
Eugenio Batres Garcia (1941) noted newscaster and journalist, writer, author and poet.
Beltrán Morales (1945-1986) poet, essayist, critic and narrator.
Erick Blandón Guevara (1951), poet
Yolanda Blanco (1954), poet and translator.
Tomás Borge (1930), writer, poet, and essayist.
Carola Brantome (1961), poet and journalist.
Omar Cabezas (1950), writer
Blanca Castellón (1961), poet
Ernesto Cardenal (1925), poet
Blanca Castellón (1958), poet
Lizandro Chávez Alfaro (1929), poet, essayist and narrator.
Juan Chow (1956), poet
José Coronel Urtecho (1906-1994), poet, translator, essayist, critic, narrator, playwright, and historian.
Alfonso Cortés (1893-1969), poet
Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002), poet
Rubén Darío (1867-1916), poet, referred to as The Father of Modernism.
Gloria Gabuardi (1945), poet and writer.
Mercedes Gordillo (1938), poet, writer and critic.
Salomón Ibarra Mayorga (1887-1985), poet and lyricist of "Salve a ti, Nicaragua", the Nicaraguan national anthem.
Erwin Krüger (1915-1973), poet and composer.
Marta Leonor González (1973), poet, narrator and journalist.
Danilo López (1954), poet
Tino López Guerra (1906-2001), poet
Rigoberto López Pérez (1929-1936), poet and writer.
María Lourdes Pallais (1954), narrator and journalist.
Carlos Martínez Rivas (1924-1998), poet
Francisco Mayorga (1949), writer
Ernesto Mejía Sánchez (1923-1985), poet
Christianne Meneses Jacobs (1971), writer, editor, and publisher.
Vidaluz Meneses (1944) poet
Tania Montenegro (1969), poet and journalist.
Rosario Murillo (1951), poet
Michèle Najlis (1948), poet
Daniel Ortega (1945), poet
Azarias H. Pallais (1884–1954), poet
Raphael Pallais (1952), writer
Joaquin Pasos (1914-1947), poet
Horacio Peña (1946), writer and poet.
Rodrigo Peñalba Franco (1981), narrator and author.
Sergio Ramírez (1942), writer
Guillermo Rothschuh Tablada (1926), poet
María Teresa Sánchez (1918-1994), poet
Mariana Sansón Argüello (1918), poet
Eunice Shade (1980), writer
Arlen Siu (?-1972), essayist
Juan Sobalvarro (1966), poet
Milagros Terán (1963), writer, poet, and essayist.
Julio Valle Castillo (1952), poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic and art critic
Daisy Zamora (1950), poet
Flavio Cesar Tijerino(1926-2006) Writer and poet.

Reverend Father Ernesto Cardenal Martínez (born January 20, 1925) is a Nicaraguan Catholic priest and was one of the most famous liberation theologians of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, a party he has since left. From 1979 to 1987 he served as Nicaragua's first culture minister. He is also famous as a poet. Cardenal was also the founder of the primitivist art community in the Solentiname Islands, where he lived for more than ten years (1965-1977). He was nominated to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in May 2005.

Poetry Resources:
Articles on Nicaraguan Poets
For a Description of Modernism

Darios Books:
Translation of Dario's poem,Roosevelt
Rubén Darío y Nicaragua: Bilingual anthology of poetry
Azul (Spanish Edition)
Poesias (Spanish Edition)
Ernesto Cardenal's Books:
Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems
Love: A Glimpse of Eternity
Apocalypse, and Other Poems
Other Recommended Bilingual Books:
Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (The Texas Pan American Series) (English and Spanish Edition)















If you are interested in Spanish Classes contact me at http://www.escuela-espanol.com

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Why Learn Spanish?

Who's learning Spanish these days? For starters, residents of the United States, a bunch not known for conquering monoligualism, are studying Spanish in record numbers. Spanish, too, is becoming of greater importance in Europe, where it often the foreign language of choice after English. And it's no wonder that Spanish is a popular second or third language: with some 400 million speakers, it's the fourth most commonly spoken language in the world (after English, Chinese and Hindustani), and according to some counts it has more native speakers than English does. It is an official language on four continents and is of historical importance elsewhere.

The numbers alone makes Spanish a good choice for those wanting to learn another tongue. But there are plenty of other reasons to learn Spanish. Better understanding of English: Much of the vocabulary of English has Latin origins, much of which came to English by way of French. Since Spanish is also a Latin language, you will find as you study Spanish that you have a better understanding of your native vocabulary. Similarly, both Spanish and English share Indo-European roots, so their grammars are similar. There is perhaps no more effective way to learn English grammar than by studying the grammar of another language, for the study forces you to think about how your language is structured. It's not unusual, for example, to gain an understanding of English verbs' tenses and moods by learning how those verbs are used in Spanish.

Knowing your neighbors: Not all that many years ago, the Spanish-speaking population of the United States was confined to the Mexican border states, Florida and New York City. But no more. Even where I live, less than 100 kilometers from the Canadian border, there are Spanish-speaking people living on the same street as I do. Knowing Spanish has proven invaluable in speaking with other residents of my town who don't know English.

Travel: Yes, it is perfectly possible to visit Mexico, Spain and even Ecuatorial Guinea without speaking a word of Spanish. But it isn't nearly half as much fun. I remember about two decades ago — when my Spanish was much less adequate than it is today — when I met some mariachis on top of one of the pyramids near Mexico City. Because I spoke (albeit limited) Spanish, they wrote down the words for me so I could sing along. It turned out to be one of my most memorable travel experiences, and one unlike most tourists have the opportunity to enjoy. Time and time again while traveling in Mexico, Central America and South America I have had doors opened to me simply because I speak Spanish, allowing me to see and do things that many other visitors do not.

Cultural understanding: While most of us (Pope John Paul II may be an exception) can't hope to learn the languages of more than one or two cultures other than that of our own, those that we can learn help us to learn how other people learn and think. When I read Latin American or Spanish newspapers, for example, I often find that I gain a sense of how other people think and feel, a way that is different than my own. Spanish also offers a wealth of literature, both modern and traditional.

Learning other languages: If you can learn Spanish, you'll have a head start in learning the other Latin-based languages such as French and Italian. And it will even help you learn Russian and German, since they too have Indo-European roots and have some characteristics (such as gender and extensive conjugation) that are present in Spanish but not English. And I wouldn't be surprised if learning Spanish might even help you learn Japanese or any other non-Indo-European language, since intensive learning the structure of a language can give you a reference point for learning others.

It's easy: Spanish is one of the easiest foreign languages to learn. Much of its vocabulary is similar to English's, and written Spanish is almost completely phonetic: Look at almost any Spanish word and you can tell how it is pronounced. And while mastering the grammar of Spanish can be a challenge, basic grammar is straightforward enough that you can have meaningful communication after only a few lessons.

Berlitz Latin American Spanish (Berlitz Phrase Book & CD) (Spanish Edition)