Poetry Friday: Gabriela Mistral

The Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral was the first South American to win the Nobel Prize (in 1945), and she remains the only South American woman to have done so. She was an educator, a social activist, a diplomat and a poet. She won the Chilean National Poetry Prize with her first book when she was just 25, but it's her second book - Ternura [Tenderness] - that I'm recommending for my poetry Friday post today. It contains some wonderful poems for children - familiar nursery rhyme rhythms, but slightly strange images - well, like our own English nursery rhymes, actually (don't look to nursery rhymes for sweetness and light!) 

Here are two of my favorite Mistral poems for children, translated by the wonderful Ursula LeGuin, who captures perfectly the rhythms and music of the originals.  Definitely check out Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, translated by LeGuin - it contains many of the children's poems by Mistral (called lullabies, Tell-a-World poems, "Trickeries," and "round dances") as well as a good selection of her most famous poems for adults, and an introduction that explains LeGuin's approach to translating Mistral. Hope you enjoy these.

LA RATA

Una rata corrió a un venado
y los venados al jaguar,
y los jaguares a los búfalos,
y los búfalos a la mar…

Pillen, pillen a los que se van!
Pillen a la rata, pillen al venado,
pillen a los búfalos y a la mar!

Miren que la rata de la delantera

se lleva en las patas lana de bordar,
y con la lana bordo mi vestido
y con el vestido me voy a casar.

Suban y pasen la llanada,
corran sin aliento, sigan sin parar,
vuelan por la novia, y por el cortejo,
y por la carroza y el velo nupcial.

THE RAT

A rat ran after a deer,
deer ran after a jaguar,
jaguars chased buffalo,
and the buffalo chased the sea...

Catch the ones who chase and flee!
Catch the rat, catch the deer,
catch the buffalo and the sea!

Look, look at the rat in front,
in its paws is a woolen thread,
with that thread I sew my gown,
in that gown I will be wed.

Climb up and run, breathless run,
ceaseless chase across the plain
after the carriage, the flying veil,
after the bride and the bridal train!

Gabriela Mistral - First Communion

 

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DAME LA MANO

                        A Tasso de Silveira

Dame la mano y danzaremos;
dame la mano y me amarás.
Como una sola flor seremos,
como una flor, y nada más.

El mismo verso cantaremos,
al mismo paso bailarás.
Como una espiga ondularemos,
como una espiga, y nada mas.

Te llamas Rosa y yo Esperanza;
pero tu nombre olvidarás,
porque seremos una danza
en la colina, y nada mas.

GIVE ME YOUR HAND

                       For Tasso de Silveira

Give me your hand and give me your love,
give me your hand and dance with me.
A single flower, and nothing more,

a single flower is all we’ll be.

Keeping time in the dance together,
singing the tune together with me,
grass in the wind, and nothing more,
grass in the wind is all we’ll be.

I’m called Hope and you’re called Rose;
but losing our names we’ll both go free,
a dance on the hills, and nothing more,
a dance on the hills is all we’ll be.

Gabriela Mistral 1889-1957

        You can read a wonderful essay about Gabriela Mistral at The Poetry Foundation website. 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by Catherine at Reading to the Core. Head over there to see what other people have posted.

Poetry Friday: Ursula Le Guin, Poet!

The multi-talented Ursula K. Le Guin - "Art is work. No one ever said it was going to be easy."

I'm pleased to hear that a book of new and selected poems by Ursula K. Le Guin will be published soon. The title is Finding My Elegy, due out in September. Le Guin is not thought of as a poet, but a poet she is and has been since before she was publishing fiction. As a poet, she summons not only the necessary leap of imagination good poetry requires, but also a fine control of the formal elements of a poem. These qualities show up in her fiction, of course. Here are two of my favorite Le Guin poems; both can be found at her website, along with many others, and I have my fingers crossed that they will be in the new volume of her work. if you came to The Drift Record today via Poetry Friday, please go read a few more poems at her website after you finish the PF rounds. While you're at it, sample the essays, prose fragments, writing advice, speeches, political writing, rants  - she calls them rants -  and links inspired by her social activism. She's amazing. And thanks go to Leda Schubert, for pointing me to this interview today in Slate and to Uma Krishnaswami for this audio conversation with Le Guin and Margaret Atwood on Oregon Public Radio.

The Old Lady

I have dreed my dree, I have wooed my wyrd,
and now I shall grow a five-foot beard
and braid it into tiny braids
and wander where the webfoot wades
among the water’s shining blades.
I will fear nothing I have feared.
I’m the queen of spades, the jack of trades,
braiding my knives into my beard.
Why should I know what I have known?
Once was enough to make it my own.
The things I got I will forget.
I’ll knot my beard into a net
and cast the net and catch a fish
who will ungrant my every wish
and leave me nothing but a stone
on the riverbed alone,
leave me nothing but a rock
where the feet of herons walk.

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Learning the Name 

               for Bette

The wood thrush, it is! Now I know

who sings that clear arpeggio,

three far notes weaving

into the evening

among leaves

and shadow;

or at dawn in the woods, I've heard

the sweet ascending triple word

echoing over

the silent river —

but never

seen the bird.

The wood thrush sings a song of its own.

Le Guin is also a translator of the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. I wish all poets took it upon themselves to do some translation work - it makes a difference in our own writing to have studied at such a close level the musicality and rhythms of poetry written in another language. 

Gabriela Mistral

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You'll find the Poetry Friday round-up this week at Life Is Better with Books. Head over there for links to what other people have posted.