Sending a Poem and Its Translation to a Friend
This is by Nicanor Parra. Sound familiar? Parra. As in Violeta Parra (Nicanor’s sister). As in Gracias a la Vida. As in her own recording of same (YouTube hers, not Mercedes’s) As in try and…
Category: Latin America
Two Ways of Looking at a Plague…
Ernesto Cardenal, Zero Hour And Other Documentary Poems New Directions, 1980 Dear Chase & Liz, The Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal died on March 1. I’m going back over his works this spring under quarantine. I…
Hard to Believe It’s Been Thirty Years…
And glad to know the Mev Puleo Program is an agent of remembrance.
Share the Wealth with Bob Suberi: Venezuela and Its Struggle for Sovereignty
This evening’s sharing will focus on Venezuela’s response to crippling U.S. sanctions. I was born in Southern California in 1948 to Jewish immigrants from Jerusalem. I served in Vietnam after being drafted in 1968 then…
With Gratitude for Reinaldo Arenas
And then, at last, they saw the country and the countercountry – because every country, like all things in this world, has its contrary, and that contrary-to-a-country is its countercountry, the forces of darkness that…
Internationalista (Daydream/2)
It’s Nablus spring 1989 The intifada is in full bloom And there’s always something happening in and with and from the resistance International delegations come and go 10,000 photos are taken of David (A Palestinian…
The Irresistible Power of Natural Powers
Having recently perused Jim Forest’s biography and memoir of Dan Berrigan (Playing in the Lions’ Den), I returned to Berrigan’s collection of poems, And the Risen Bread. If I can find five poems in such…
Share the Wealth with Xavier Vincent and Wendy Lee
Wendy is a Saint Louis University alum, and Xavier is a French native. They met in Shanghai, where their lives were established. Last summer, they uprooted from their comfortable life to pursue their long-term travel…
Disponibilidade
I first learned this Portuguese word from Mev, when she worked in Brazil among so many radical, radiant Christians. Here’s how she defined it in her book, The Struggle Is One: “a disposition of openness…
Festival of Kissing, Festival of Touching
Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces Marginalia and Notes, February 2001 I read this book because, like Arenas’s The Color of Summer, it exemplifies a style and structure that I wish to adapt for my…