REELY'S POETRY BLOG

For all you folks who can speak Spanish and want to see a fine audio poetry site in that language, here is part of an email I got from Malugo for an audio poem called La Marioneta (The Puppet, in English), which is here on Desde el Alma.

“En el día de hoy traigo un poema para pensar y actuar en la vida, del mexicano Johnny Welsh, La Marioneta. Siempre se ha tenido la idea de que este poema lo escribió el colombiano García Marquez, pero la realidad es que Welsh había escrito este poema a su compañero de títeres “Mofles”, pero de alguna manera su nombre había sido sustituido por el nombre del Premio Nobel.”

With the aid of the Google translator, I was able to find out that the poem has quite a history. It has its own page in the Museum of Hoaxes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Final Farewell. The poem is translated to English on there, (which is great for me even though I did listen to La Marioneta, which sounded beautiful in Spanish). It’s written in the nature of Instantes/Pick More Daisies.

My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hatred on ice
and wait for the sun to come out. With a dream of Van Gogh
I would paint on the stars a poem by Benedetti,
and a song by Serrat would be my serenade to the moon.

It’s an interesting story how people came to think it was written by Marquez, so check it out, whether you speak English, Spanish or both.

In the process of adding more Spanish poetry to Reely’s Poetry Pages, I came across the mystery of the poem Instantes:

Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot of Spanish so I must rely on my browser’s translation to whatever extent I can make sense of it. So, forgive me for any mistakes or misconceptions, but from what I’ve been able to glean from this Spanish article: Jorge Luis Borges, Autor del Poema Instantes, there are 2 main claims to authorship for the poem Instantes when it is attributed to Argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges.

Pick More Daisies is a very similar prose piece, the author of which was Don Herold. This piece was published in the Readers Digest in 1953.

Then there is the contention that a woman in Kentucky named Nadine Stair wrote it and the title was “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” The first known publication appears to have been March 27, 1978. (The translated page says it was in Family Circus, which I am guessing is Family Circle magazine since the only Family Circus I know about is a cartoon). But, tellingly perhaps, the Stair piece ends with “I’d pick more daisies.”

The article also details an investigation into the existence of Nadine Stair, the results of which apparently showed she never existed, but that the woman who was credited with the poem was really named Nadine Strain. It is concluded that both the piece attributed to Borges and the one credited to Stair / Strain are adapted (putting it charitably) from the Herold piece, although it is speculated that Mr. Herold may have gotten his own inspiration from an earlier writing himself, since there appears to be some quote marks after the title around the first line.

Here’s yet another one online “I’d Pick More Daisies” credited to an ‘anonymous’ friar in Nebraska, Brother Jeremiah.

There are many versions online simply attributed to ‘anonymous.’

Confused? Me, too. All the same, the whole affair leaves me with these questions:

If it was an English piece to begin with, who really translated it into Spanish?

If it was in Spanish first, why didn’t whoever translated it into English make the title “Moments”? The browser translation does and methinks that kinda sounds better. Oh, wait … Read the rest of this entry »

Today is Independence Day in the Dominican Republic. Let’s read a poem that I just think is awesome by the Dominican poet, Pedro Mir. It don’t speak Spanish myself (but I did add the link to the original Spanish below). However, as you will see, the poet himself wholeheartedly praised this English translation of his poem by Jonathan Cohen:

The Countersong to Walt Whitman

a son of the Caribbean,
Antillean to be exact.
The raw product of a simple
Puerto Rican girl
and a Cuban worker,
born precisely, and poor,
on Quisqueyan soil.
Overflowing with voices,
full of eyes
wide open throughout the islands,
I have come to speak to Walt Whitman,
a kosmos,
of Manhattan the son.
People will ask,
Who are you?
I understand.
Nobody had better ask me
who Walt Whitman is.
I would go sob on his white beard.
And yet,
I am going to say again who Walt Whitman is,
a kosmos,
of Manhattan the son.

continue here

Links:
Contracanto a Walt Whitman
The Colonial Zone-DR – tons of information about the Dominican Republic with great Carnivale photos
Pedro Mir and His Countersong by Jean Franco