y la barca del sueño que en el espacio boga;
y bajo la ventana de mi Bella-Durmiente,
el sollozo continuo del chorro de la fuente
y el cuello del gran cisne blanco que me interroga.
SINFONÍA EN GRIS MAYOR
El mar como un vasto cristal azogado
refleja la lámina de un cielo de zinc;
lejanas bandadas de pájaros manchan
el fondo bruñido de pálido gris.
El sol como vidrio redondo y opaco
con paso de enfermo camina al cenit;
el viento marino descansa en la sombra
teniendo de almohada su negro clarín.
Las ondas que mueven su vientre de plomo
debajo del muelle parecen gemir.
Sentado en un cable, fumando su pipa,
está un marinero pensando en las playas
de un vago, lejano, brumoso país.
Es viejo ese lobo. Tostaron su cara
los rayos de fuego del sol del Brasil;
los recios tifones del mar de la China
le han visto bebiendo su frasco de gin.
La espuma impregnada de yodo y salitre
ha tiempo conoce su roja nariz,
sus crespos cabellos, sus bíceps de atleta,
su gorra de lona, su blusa de dril.
En medio del humo que forma el tabaco
ve el viejo el lejano, brumoso país,
adonde una tarde caliente y dorada
tendidas las velas partió el bergantín . . .
La siesta del trópico. El lobo se aduerme.
Ya todo lo envuelve la gama del gris.
Parece que un suave enorme esfumino
del curvo horizonte borrara el confín.
La siesta del trópico. La vieja cigarra
ensaya su ronca guitarra senil,
y el grillo preludia su solo monótono
en la única cuerda que está en su violin.
TRISTE, MUY TRISTEMENTE . . .
Un día estaba yo triste, muy tristemente
viendo cómo caía el agua de una fuente;
era la noche dulce y argentina. Lloraba
la noche. Suspiraba la noche. Sollozaba
la noche. Y el crepúsculo en su suave amatista,
diluía la lágrima de un misterioso artista.
Y ese artista era yo, misterioso y gimiente,
que mezclaba mi alma al chorro de la fuente.
1916
DE INVIERNO
En invernales horas, mired a Carolina.
Medio apelotonada, descansa en el sillón,
envuelta con su abrigo de marta cibelina
y no lejos del fuego que brilla en el salón.
El fino angora blanco junto a ella se reclina,
rozando con su hocico la falda de Alençon,
no lejos de las jarras de porcelana china
que medio oculta un biombo de seda del Japón.
Con sus sutiles filtros la invade un dulce sueño:
entro, sin hacer ruido; dejo mi abrigo gris;
voy a besar su rostro, rosado y halagüeño
como una rosa roja que fuera flor de lis.
Abre los ojos, mírame con su mirada risueño,
y en tanto cae la nieve del cielo de París.
NOTES TO SOME OF THE POEMS AND THE ESSAY
I
“2012”
“Untitled” is a silk-screen print by Chicano artist Malaquias Montoya, inspired by the poetry of his late son, Andrés Montoya.
Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas, founded by Roberto Tejada.
Venus in Fur is a two-person play by David Ives set in New York City.
Sex with Strangers is a two-person play by Laura Eason.
Azul . . . is a collection of stories and poems by Rubén Darío, published in Chile in 1888 and considered one of the seminal works of modernismo. Among its poems are the sonnets “De invierno” and “Walt Whitman.”
PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano & Latino Literary Art is a magazine founded by elena minor.
Midnight in Paris is a movie written and directed by Woody Allen. Yuba and Poppie are the names of two family pets—dogs.
My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer was published by University of California Press in 2010.
“Poem with Citations from the O.E.D.”
The strategy adopted for this poem is borrowed from Robert Pinsky’s “Poem With Refrains.”
“Reasons Why She Didn’t”
Tipitapa is a municipality in the Managua department of Nicaragua.
“Photo, 1945”
La Prensa, founded in 1926, is Nicaragua’s largest circulation daily. The córdoba is Nicaragua’s currency.
“Ernesto Cardenal in Berkeley”
In 1982, Ernesto Cardenal gave a poetry reading in Wheeler Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus.
Francisco Hernández de Córdoba (1475–1526) is reputed as the founder of Nicaragua, and founded two important Nicaraguan cities, Granada and León. Córdoba was an officer of Pedro Arias Dávila. Hernán Cortés and Hernan Ponce de Leon supported Córdoba during the conquest of Nicaragua in 1524 in return for support against Cristóbal de Olid. Pedrarias Dávila considered Córdoba an insurrectionist and a traitor, and finally captured and beheaded him.
II
“1985”
The Contras were U.S.-backed and funded rebel groups active from 1979 to the early 1990s in opposition to the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Contras committed a large number of human rights violations. Supporters of the Contras tried to downplay these violations, particularly the Reagan administration.
“Poem with a Phrase of Isherwood”
In 2010, Jan Brewer, Governor of Arizona, signed the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, making it “a state crime for illegal immigrants to not have an alien registration document,” requiring police “to question people about their immigration status if there is reason.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/arizona-lawmakers-send-immigration-bill-to-gov/
Joe Arpaio is a former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, from 1993 through 2016. In July 2017 he was convicted of contempt of court, a crime for which he was pardoned by President Donald Trump on August 25, 2017.
“Bay Area Rapid Transit”
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit public transportation system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. The heavy rail elevated and subway system connects San Francisco with cities in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Mateo counties.
“December 31, 1965”
Source material for this poem is taken verbatim from the “Nation” section of TIME magazine dated “Friday, December 31, 1965,” the date of my birth.
“Lui Minghe Speaks”
On September 9, 2001, a New York Times article described the plight of people in China incarcerated under dubious circumstances as a result of China’s then “strike hard” campaign. One of those wrongfully convicted to face death, but finally released after lengthy appeals, was a man named Lui Minghe.
“The Century”
The Century, narrated and presented by the late Peter Jennings, is a six-episode television series that reviews some of the most important events of the 20th Century. Each episode takes on two subjects. Episode two, titled “Ultimate Power,” explores Hitler’s rise to power in Germany and America’s race to develop the atom bomb. The physicist was J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967).
III
“We Talk Dogs”
The Yuba River is a tributary of the Feather River in the Sierra Nevada and eastern Sacramento Valley in California.
Cristina Maria Saralegui is a Cuban-born American journalist, television personality, actress and talk show host of the Spanish-language eponymous show, Cristina.
American boxer Aaron Pryor (1955–2016) and Nicaraguan boxer Alexis Arguello (1952–2009) fought twice: on November 12, 1982 and September 9, 1983. In the first fight, Arguello attempted to become the firs
t boxer in history to win a world title in four different weight categories. It was dubbed “The Battle of the Champions.” Pryor won by TKO in round fourteen. Pryor defeated Arguello again in the rematch by KO in round ten. Both their bouts, especially the first, are considered among the best in boxing history.
“Voices”
Carlos Gardel (1890–1935) was a French Argentine singer, songwriter, composer and actor, and the most prominent figure in the history of tango.
“Caminito” (“little walkway” or “little path” in Spanish) is a street museum and a traditional alley, located in La Boca, a neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Playa Pochomil is one of the more popular beaches on the Pacific Coast, west of Managua, Nicaragua.
IV
“Because They Lived Abroad”
It’s well-documented that Rubén Darío and Amado Nervo shared an apartment in the Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre on rue du Faubourg in 1900. My particular source was the notes for Alberto Acereda’s article in Bulletin of Spanish Studies, which I say more about in my essay, “My Rubén,” section V of this book.
“y no saber adonde vamos / ni de donde venimos” is the ending of Rubén Darío’s poem, “Lo fatal,” from his book, Cantos de vida y esperanza (1905).
“Hay golpes en la vida tan fuertes . . . ¡Yo no sé!” is the first and last line from “Los heraldos negros,” the title poem from Cesar Vallejo’s collection Los heraldos negros (1918).
“Voices”
The Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle is located in Washington, D.C., a few doors down from the YMCA at the corner of Rhode Island and Seventeenth Street NW, now demolished.
“January 21, 2013”
This poem paraphrases some passages from Sergio Ramírez’s novel, Margarita, está linda la mar. The title of the novel is a line from Rubén Darío’s poem, “A Margarita Debayle.”
On January 21, 2013, Richard Blanco became the first Latinx and the first openly gay poet to read the inaugural poem at a Presidential inauguration, in this case to inaugurate Barack Obama’s second term.
“Poem Beginning with a Fragment of Andrés Montoya”
The first line of this poem is a stanza from an Andrés Montoya poem, from his posthumous volume of poetry, A Jury of Trees (Bilingual Press/Letras Latinas, 2017).
Leticia Hernández-Linares is a CantoMundo fellow and the author of Mucha Muchacha, Too Much Girl: Poems (Tía Chucha Press, 2015).
“Creed”
The “architecture” or “scaffolding” of this poem is borrowed from a poem by Carmen Calatayud in her book In the Company of Spirits (Press 53, 2012).
V
“My Rubén”
I.
Félix Rubén García Sarmiento (1867–1916), known as Rubén Darío, was a Nicaraguan poet who initiated the Spanish-American literary movement known as modernismo that flourished at the end of the 19th century. Darío has had a great and lasting influence on 20th century Spanish and Latin American literature and journalism. He is the undisputed father of the modernismo literary movement (not to be confused with English-language modernism).
The cited rhymed couplet is the first two lines of Rubén Darío’s poem “Sonatina,” from his collection Prosas Profanas from 1896.
Lysander Kemp (1920–1992) worked as a writer, professor, translator, and was head editor of the University of Texas Press from 1966 to 1975. He translated The Selected Poems of Rubén Darío (University of Texas Press, 1965).
Ian Gibson is an Irish-born author and Hispanist known for his biographies of the poet Antonio Machado, Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca. In 2002, he also published an “autobiography” titled Yo, Rubén Darío.
Francisco X. Alarcón (1954–2016) was a Chicano poet and educator. He was one of the few Chicano poets to have gained recognition while writing mostly in Spanish within the United States. He was the author of some twenty books and chap-books of poetry for adults and children. Among his many awards are the American Book Award and the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Award.
Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) he was executed by firing squad by Nationalist forces. Among his poetry collections are Poeta en Nueva York, Romancero gitano, and Poema del cante jondo.
Gerardo Diego (1896–1987) is perhaps the least known poet, outside of Spain, of the renowned Generation of ’27, which included, in addition to Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Pedro Salinas, Jorge Guillén and Luis Cernuda, to name a few. Before the Spanish Civil War, Diego had the foresight to edit the groundbreaking and prophetic Spanish Poetry Anthology 1915–1931. He was also among the most fervent of his group to explore and embrace the avant-garde tendencies of his time, particularly creationismo. His most well-known collection is from 1925, Manual de espumas.
II.
Evensong: Contemporary American Poets on Spirituality (Bottom Dog Press, 2006) was edited by Gerry LaFemina and Chad Prevost.
III.
The epigraph by Rigoberto González is from his essay “Toward a Mariposa Consciousness” in his book Red-Inked Retablos (University of Arizona Press, 2013).
Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic Studies and Researches on Spain, Portugal and Latin America is published by Routledge. The first version of “‘Nuestro más profundo y sublime secreto’: los amores transgresores entre Rubén Darío y Amado Nervo.” was published August 28, 2012.
The essay “Flyer, Closet, Poem” appeared in Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press, 2010).
Sergio Ramírez’s online piece titled “El sencillo arte de dejarse de engañar” appeared online in La Jornada on November 21, 2012.
“January 21, 2013” appeared in the privately distributed Forward to Velma; the print journal, MiPoesias; the online journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly; the anthology, Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States (Tía Chucha Press, 2017); and the limited chapbook His Tongue a Swath of Sky (m o m o t o m b i t o, 2019).
The New Yorker published “Lorca and the Gay World” about Ian Gibson’s book on March 19, 2009, which quotes from an interview with Gibson, first published in Independent on March 14, 2009.
Siglo diecinueve (Literature hispánica) is edited by Universitas Castellae in Valladolid, Spain.
Rigoberto González is an award-winning writer and literary activist. He is the author and editor of nineteen books in multiple genres, including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, children’s literature, and criticism.
In his article “Toward a Mariposa Consciousness: Reimagining Queer Chicano and Latino Identities,” published in 2014, literary scholar and poet Daniel Enrique Pérez lays the groundwork of what he calls “a mariposa consciousness, a decolonial site that is grounded in an awareness of the social location, social relations, and history of the mariposa subject.” In an e-mail on September 6, 2017, Pérez writes: “I see Mariposa poetics as a genre that includes writers who write in Spanish . . . I view Mariposa theory as a subset of Jotería studies, both have ties to a lengthy history that spans the Americas and Europe.”
PUBLICATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The poems in After Rubén, often in earlier versions, have appeared in literary journals, anthologies, community publications, online archives, or as broadsides. I would like to gratefully acknowledge these sources here.
Academy of American Poets archive (online): “Jugglers”; El Andar: “The Inevitable”; Beltway Poetry Quarterly (online): “January 21, 2013,” “2012,” “1916,” “To George W. Bush” (as “To the President”), “Symphony in Gray,” and “The Century”; Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review: “Voices” (as “My Father’s Voice(s)”); Bordersenses: “Reasons Why She Didn’t”; Chain: “Walt” (as “Walt Whitman”); The Chattahoochee Review: “Portrait with lines of Montale”; Chrysalis: “1916”; Crab Orchard Review: “To the Old World” (as “Viejo Mundo”) and “We Talk Dogs”(as “Dogs”), as one of two embedded
poems in the nonfiction piece, “The Nicaraguan Novel”; DÁNTA: “Symphony in Gray”; Diálogo: “We Talk Dogs” (as “Perros”); Electronic Poetry Review (online): “Poem with Citations from the O.E.D.” and “Blister”; Forward to Velma: “January 21, 2013”; Great River Review: “Academia Escolar,” “Gloria’s” and “Wind & Rain” (as “Of Wind and Rain”); Heliotrope: “The Century”; Jacket (online): “Nicaragua in a Voice”and “Postcard” (as “View from the Park”); The Journal: “Lui Minghe Speaks”; Jung Journal: “Helen Speaks”; KONCH (online): “Bay Area Rapid Transit”; The Los Angeles Review: “Poem Beginning With a Fragment of Andrés Montoya”; Luna: “Postcard” (as “View from the Park”); Mandorla: “2012,” “Voices,” “Bay Area Rapid Transit” (as “Poem”), “December 31, 1965,” and “Wind & Rain” (as “Of Wind and Rain”); MiPoesias: “January 21, 2013”; The Noe Valley Voice: “Jugglers” and “Postcard” (as “View from the Park”); Oxford Review of Books (online): “Tenochtitlan, 1523”; PALABRA: “I Pursue a Shape,” “Seashell” (as “Caracol”), and “Winter Hours”; Pilgrimage: “Calle Momotombo” and “Poem With a Phrase of Isherwood”; Poetry Flash: “1985” (as “Witness”); Poetry Foundation archive (online): “Blister”; Poetry Now: “Jugglers”; Public Pool (online): “Canción,” “After Fragments of Juan Felipe Herrera,” and “Creed”; Tertulia (online): “Nicaragua in a Voice,” and “A Wave”; Written Here: “Helen Speaks.”
After Rubén Page 8
