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Nonprofit publisher Copper Canyon Press is trying to raise $50,000 to finance a book of previously unseen and unpublished poems written by iconic Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

Archivists discovered the new works last year among Neruda’s notebooks and scraps of paper. Here is more about the project from its Kickstarter page:

Pablo Neruda’s estate has now entrusted Copper Canyon Press to bring these lost poems to a North American audience for the first time, and we are thrilled to be able to bring this literary treasure to you. Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda will be translated by award-winning translator and poet Forrest Gander and is slated for release in spring 2016. As a nonprofit publisher we need your help to produce a beautiful book of this historic collection.

Have you ever written a letter to one of your favorite authors?

More than 50,000 young readers (grades 4 through 12) participated in the Library of Congress’ Letters About Literature program. Each participant was tasked with writing a letter to an author (living or deceased) about how one of their books affected them.

According to the press release, this “initiative is a reading-promotion program of the Center for the Book, with the goal of instilling a lifelong love of reading in the nation’s youth.” Below, we’ve posted the full list of winners and honors.

Level 1 (Grades 4 to 6)

National Prize: Gerel Sanzhikov of New Jersey’s letter focused on The Running Dream by Wendell Van Draanen.

National Honor Award: Chelsea Brown of Virginia’s letter focused on Shades of Black by Sandra L. Pinkney.

Level 2 (Grades 7 to 8)

National Prize: Gabriel Ferris of Maine’s letter focused on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

National Honor Award (three-way tie): Emmy Goyette of New Hampshire’s letter focused on Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Jonathan Hoff of New Jersey’s letter focused on Maus by Art Spiegelman.

Julianna Gorman of Maryland’s letter focused on Night by Elie Wiesel.

Level 3 (Grades 9 to 12)

National Prize: Aidan Kingwell of Illinois’ letter focused on the Mary Oliver poem \"When Death Comes.\"

National Honor Award (tied between two participants): Lisa Le of the District of Columbia’s focused on The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Hannah DesChamp of Oregon’s letter focused on the Pablo Neruda poem \"I Do Not Love You Except Because I Love You.\"

Welcome to our third week of our Bookjumper Summer Reading Series! This is my way of inspiring parents who are looking for creative ways to keep their kids reading this summer!

Our summer reading program will be a combination of some really neat things. All of our protagonists are girls or women and most of our showcased authors are women as well. I will be offering up a combination of themed weeks, great novels, booklist giveaways, and blog post recaps so be sure and stop by to discover more wonderful ways have A Book-jumper Summer while Exploring Our World and Beyond!

This week I want to focus on the wonderful works of one of our favorite authors, Pam Munoz Ryan.

I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to share The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan with you. The Dreamer is an invitation into the imaginative world of Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets !! The Dreamer has allowed me to share my love of this poet with my children as we wander through his world and life in Chile.

It is a tale of day-dreaming, gathering those little items which catch our eye, while guarding and savoring them into a collection of our childhood. Pam Munoz Ryan does an incredible job of weaving facts into an incredible story of magic, nostalgia, and intrigue. Pablo Neruda’s real name was Neftali Reyes. He had a very stern and unbearable father. Protecting him were his step-mother, uncle, and sister. Along with everyday situations in his household and school, we are invited on a wandering journeys to the rainforest where Neftali’s imagination is taken away by all of the fauna, insects, and animals which live in the forest.

Another trip takes us to the ocean where Neftali meets a librarian who gives him his hide-out for the summer. This turns into a spectacular adventure with his sister of trying to save a swan. Later Neftali learns of the movement to kick indigenous people out of their homeland from his uncle. As he grows, he takes up the cause to protect them. Making sure that he doesn’t seek the wrath of his father, he uses a pseudonym. His new last name Neruda was derived from a poet from Czechoslovakia.

One of the elements that makes this book such a treasure to read and hold are the simple but powerful illustrations of Peter Sis. His contributions to this magical story gives us a look into the world of a poet through the heart and eyes.

Equally as interesting is Pam Munoz Ryan’s telling of what inspired her to write this story. Also in the back are several beautifully selected poems of Pablo Neruda’s. This book is a poetic magical tale that is sure to inspire all of us to look at those simple things around us with the eye of a poet. Life is for living and experiencing and this book is an invitation to do just this.

Something To Do

A Word Box

In the story The Dreamer, Neftali Reyes loves to collect things. One of his most beloved collections are his words. Writing them on a piece of paper, folding it gently , and then placing it in his drawer; Neftali can return anytime he wants to and remember the words that caught his imagination. Let’s remember our friend Neftali by making a word box.

Supplies:

• One unfinished wood or paper mache box found in a craft store.
• Scrapbooking word stickers
• Mod Podge matt finish
• Brush
• Paper

Instructions:

1. Taking your wooden box and the word stickers, put words all over your box in a design of your choosing.
2. Once you’ve finished sticking your words on the box, brush Mod-Podge all over the words and let it dry.
3. You can use any kind of paper. We like to use paper with pretty colors on one side but white paper works just fine. Cut little pieces of paper that fit into your box. Start writing your favorite words down and saving them in your word box.

Beautiful Spanish Words

The Dreamer uses a beautiful mix of English and Spanish. I liked the way the Spanish was woven throughout the story without it being distracting. Each Spanish word followed with its English meaning. By using the Spanish language in this way, it brought the essence of Chile into the story.

Here’s a Spanish lexicon from The Dreamer. Be sure to write these words on colorful cards and put them into your word box.

• Adios:: Good-bye
• el viento:: the wind
• Porfa :: Please
• buena suerte:: good luck
• mapuche:: indigenous people in Aranucania
• Bravo:: Good Job
• la empanadas y el bistec:: Potato turnovers and steak
• Aqui Estoy:: I am here.
• El pan amasado:: Home made bread
• futbol:: soccer
• Amigo:: friend
• un escondite:: a hideout
• una chismosa:: a tattletale
• Amor:: Love

Poetry Explorations

In The Dreamer author Pam Munoz Ryan poses many questions to get us thinking in words. Let’s look at those questions and write a short poem about the Wind. Remember when Neftali’s hat and gloves gotten blown away by the wind. What do these questions inspire in you ?

1. What does the wind give ?
2. What does the wind take away?
3. Where is the storehouse of lost and found ?

Let’s experience Time through words. By answering the following questions you can experience time in a new way. Write a little poem about time.

1. What is the color of a minute? A month ? A Year ?

Reader’s Theater

A great way to instill active reading in our young readers is to practice in a Reader’s Theater setting. Set for four voices, author Pam Munoz Ryan has created this Reader’s Theater edition to her book The Dreamer.

I’d like to know…..

Have you read this book? If so, share your thoughts and comments below!

***Don’t forget! Our Pam Munoz Ryan Great book Giveaway has just begun! Be sure and pop by to enter-to-win SXI great books from this author!

Homeschooling can be complicated and frustrating, especially if you are overloaded with information. The good news is that you don’t have to figure it out alone. Donna Ashton’s The Waldorf Home School Handbook is a simple and step-by-step guide to creating and understanding a Waldorf-inspired homeschool plan. Within the pages of this all-in-one homeschooling guide parents will find information, samples of lesson plans and curriculum, helpful hints and the secrets behind the three Areas for Optimum Learning. Join Donna as she guides you through the Waldorf method and reveals how to educate your children in a nurturing and creative environment. Visit the Waldorf Homeschool Handbook info page HERE-The Waldorf Homeschool Handbook: The Simple Step-by-Step guide to creating a Waldorf-inspired homeschool.

The post The Book-jumper Summer Reading Series: The Dreamer Book Review and Activity appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

I’ve known for a long time that I wanted to share The Dreamer by Pam Munoz Ryan with you for National Poetry Month. The Dreamer is an invitation into the imaginative world of Pablo Neruda. Pablo Neruda is one of my favorite poets !! The Dreamer has allowed me to share my love of this poet with my children as we wander through his world and life in Chile.

It is a tale of day-dreaming, gathering those little items which catch our eye, while guarding and savoring them into a collection of our childhood. Pam Munoz Ryan does an incredible job of weaving facts into an incredible story of magic, nostalgia, and intrigue. Pablo Neruda’s real name was Neftali Reyes. He had a very stern and unbearable father. Protecting him were his step-mother, uncle, and sister. Along with everyday situations in his household and school, we are invited on wandering journeys to the rainforest where Neftali’s imagination is taken away by all of the fauna, insects, and animals which live in the forest.

Another trip takes us to the ocean where Neftali meets a librarian who gives him his hide-out for the summer. This turns into a spectacular adventure with his sister of trying to save a swan. Later Neftali learns of the movement to kick indigenous people out of their homeland from his uncle. As he grows, he takes up the cause to protect them. Making sure that he doesn’t seek the wrath of his father, he uses a pseudonym. His new last name Neruda was derived from a poet from Czechoslovakia.

One of the elements that makes this book such a treasure to read and hold are the simple but powerful illustrations of Peter Sis. His contributions to this magical story gives us a look into the world of a poet through the heart and eyes.

Equally as interesting is Pam Munoz Ryan’s telling of what inspired her to write this story. Also in the back are several beautifully selected poems of Pablo Neruda’s. This book is a poetic magical tale that is sure to inspire all of us to look at those simple things around us with the eye of a poet. Life is for living and experiencing and this book is an invitation to do just this.

Something To Do

A Word Box

In the story The Dreamer, Neftali Reyes loves to collect things. One of his most beloved collections are his words. Writing them on a piece of paper, folding it gently , and then placing it in his drawer; Neftali can return anytime he wants to and remember the words that caught his imagination. Let’s remember our friend Neftali by making a word box.

Supplies:

• One unfinished wood or paper mache box found in a craft store.
• Scrapbooking word stickers
• Mod Podge matt finish
• Brush
• Paper

Instructions:

1. Taking your wooden box and the word stickers, put words all over your box in a design of your choosing.
2. Once you’ve finished sticking your words on the box, brush Mod Podge all over the words and let it dry.
3. You can use any kind of paper. We like to use paper with pretty colors on one side but white paper works just fine. Cut little pieces of paper that fit into your box. Start writing your favorite words down and saving them in your word box.

Beautiful Spanish Words

The Dreamer uses a beautiful mix of English and Spanish. I liked the way the Spanish was woven throughout the story without it being distracting. Each Spanish word followed with it’s English meaning. By using the Spanish language in this way, it brought the essence of Chile into the story.

Here’s a Spanish lexicon from The Dreamer. Be sure to write these words on colorful cards and put them into your word box.

• Adios:: Good-bye
• el viento:: the wind
• Porfa :: Please
• buena suerte:: good luck
• mapuche:: indigenous people in Aranucania
• Bravo:: Good Job
• la empanadas y el bistec:: Potato turnovers and steak
• Aqui Estoy:: I am here.
• El pan amasado:: Home made bread
• futbol:: soccer
• Amigo:: friend
• un escondite:: a hideout
• una chismosa:: a tattletale
• Amor:: Love

Poetry Explorations

In The Dreamer author Pam Munoz Ryan poses many questions to get us thinking in words. Let’s look at those questions and write a short poem about the Wind. Remember when Neftali’s hat and gloves gotten blown away by the wind. What do these questions inspire in you ?

1. What does the wind give ?
2. What does the wind take away?
3. Where is the storehouse of lost and found ?

Let’s experience Time through words. By answering the following questions you can experience time in a new way. Write a little poem about time.

1. What is the color of a minute? A month ? A Year ?

Reader’s Theater

A great way to instill active reading in our young readers is to practice in a Reader’s Theater setting. Set for four voices, author Pam Munoz Ryan has created this Reader’s Theater edition to her book The Dreamer.

I’d like to know…..

Have you read this book? If so, share your thoughts and comments below!

Homeschooling can be complicated and frustrating, especially if you are overloaded with information. The good news is that you don’t have to figure it out alone. Donna Ashton’s The Waldorf Home School Handbook is a simple and step-by-step guide to creating and understanding a Waldorf-inspired homeschool plan. Within the pages of this all-in-one homeschooling guide parents will find information, samples of lesson plans and curriculum, helpful hints and the secrets behind the three Areas for Optimum Learning. Join Donna as she guides you through the Waldorf method and reveals how to educate your children in a nurturing and creative environment. Visit the Waldorf Homeschool Handbook info page HERE.

The post Ready to Celebrate Poetry Month with The Dreamer? appeared first on Jump Into A Book.

Poet Carolyn Kizer has died. She was 89-years-old.

Kizer (pictured, via) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for her collection, Yin. Throughout her writing career, she published several volumes of poetry. Follow this link to read a few of Kizer’s poems.

Here’s more from The Los Angeles Times: “At 17 she published a poem in the New Yorker (her only poem to appear in that publication, as it turned out)…Throughout her career, she stood up for what she believed, persuading Lyndon Johnson to lift a travel ban against Chilean poet Pablo Neruda in 1970, and, 28 years later, resigning (along with her friend Maxine Kumin) as a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets to protest the organization’s lack of diversity.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Maria T. Lennon is a graduate of the London School of Economics, a novelist, a screenwriter, and the author of Confessions of a So-called Middle Child, the first book featuring the irrepressible Charlie C. Cooper.

To celebrate National Poetry Month, we found a video featuring pop star Madonna and her reading of the poem “If You Forget Me.” Pablo Neruda originally wrote this poem in Spanish and called it “Si Tu Me Olvidas.”

Madonna’s reading is featured on The Postman (Il Postino) movie soundtrack. It also contains poetry recitations delivered by Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts, UK musician Sting, and The Avengers actor Samuel L. Jackson.

Neruda, a celebrated Chilean writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. You can read more pieces written by Neruda at The Poetry Foundation’s website. What’s your favorite Pablo Neruda poem?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

I love Neruda, but haven't read all of his stuff. I was happy to come across this one a few weeks ago on a friend's food blog. You can find it in 100 Love Sonnets: Cien sonetos de amor (English and Spanish Edition).


XXXIV
(You are the daughter of the sea)
by Pablo Neruda

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano’s first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise; your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell; you know the deep essence of water and the earth, conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest—
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.

Today's Poetry Friday roundup is over at On the Way to Somewhere-- be sure to check it out!

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

The great publisher Barney Rosset has passed away. Rosset bought Grove Press in the 1950s, championing the work of countless writers, including: Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Pablo Neruda, Kenzaburo Oe, Kathy Acker, and David Mamet.

In the 1960s, he launched the provocative magazine, Evergreen Review. In a highly recommended interview at The Paris Review, Rosset shared his first encounter with Miller’s work as a college freshman at Swarthmore:

I read Tropic of Cancer, which I bought at Steloff’s Gotham Book Mart on Forty-seventh Street. Who told me about it, I don’t know, but I liked it enormously and I wrote my freshman English paper about both it and The Air Conditioned Nightmare … After I read Tropic of Cancer, I left—decided to go to Mexico. Because the book had influenced me so much, I left in the middle of the term. But I ran out of money. I never got to Mexico; I got as far as Florida and I came back. Four weeks had gone by. They had reported me missing to the United States government. My family didn’t know where I was. I came back, sort of sadly.

(Via Sarah Weinman)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Edited by Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy,
Let’s Celebrate! Festival Poems from Around the World
Frances Lincoln, 2011.

Ages 5-11

Let’s Celebrate is an effervescent anthology of diverse poetry put together by poets Debjani Chatterjee and Brian D’Arcy. It invites young readers to share in the exuberance of a wide array of festivals celebrated around the world. Starting with “The Chinese Dragon” bringing in the Chinese New Year, ending with “Kwanzaa” in December, and visiting different cultures, countries and religions in between, the book takes children on a journey whose unifying thread is the happiness that each of the festivals awakens. Children will likely find poems relating to festivals that are familiar to them, and their curiosity will be aroused to find out about the rest. Endnotes about each festival give relevant background; and again, children may want to know more after reading them.

The poems themselves come in a variety of forms – some with regular patterns of rhyme and meter, others in free verse. There are choruses that just have to be chanted aloud, like “Carnival! Carnival! Everybody shout out – Carnival!” in Valerie Bloom’s wonderful poem “Carnival”. There are also translations, like the selection of Japanese “Cherry Blossom” haiku; “Dance, Dance: A Poem for Rangali Bihu” from Assam; and extracts from Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to Tomatoes”, used to commemorate the Spanish Tomatina Festival. Illustrator Shirin Adl’s exuberant splashes of red paint certainly get the message across here!

In fact, the illustrations are a joy throughout. Adl uses an effective blend of painting and paper/fabric/photographic collage (I especially love the seeds, pulses and herbs illustrating Chatterjee’s acrostic “Diwali”). Plenty of authentic contextual detail helps to bring the celebrating to life, and lots of happy children and their families are an open-armed invitation for young readers to join in the celebrations too, whether it’s helping to scrape pancakes off the ceiling while “Tossing Pancakes” (by Nick Toczek), running to “get your skates on” for the “Ice Festival” (by D’Arcy), or counting out the significance of each candle for “Hannukah” (by Andrea Shavick).

So yes, let us indeed celebrate – you can’t help but be caught up in the joyous spirit of this anthology. And with every day being a festival somewhere in the world, as Chatterjee and D’Arcy point out in their introduction, if there isn’t a poem for their particular festive day (or indeed, even if there is), Let’s Celebrate! will doubtless inspire young readers to compose one of their own.

Marjorie Coughlan
November 2011

Only the shadows
know
the secrets
of closed houses,
only the forbidden wind
and the moon that shines
on the roof

It was a movie weekend—"Slumdog Millionaire" at ten on Friday night, "Frost/Nixon" at 4:15 Sunday, "Mongol," courtesy of Netflix, in between, late Saturday afternoon. And then the Oscars, a tradition strong as Christmas here—a semi-glamorous meal delivered picnic style while the "barely mint" dresses float by. The Oscars always make me cry. Call me a sentimental fool (you won't be the first), but I like seeing dreams fulfilled. I like the idea that it's possible.

In between, I was walking about my humble abode feeling knocked-down grateful for all the book recommendations that came my way via Looking for Book Love, for all the passion that is out there, still, for stories that cling to the page. While I considered the titles that came in, I read essays on writing and craft—re-read them, I should say, in preparation for Tuesday, when I'll spend a chunk of the day in a coffee shop with aspiring young writers. Sven Birkerts, Natalia Ginzburg, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Gerald Stern, Stanley Kunitz, Forrest Gander, and of course Pablo Neruda will keep me and the girls company throughout a day that will also be spent collecting and sorting the details we hunt down with our cameras.

We'll yield to six exercises, which I've named the following way. I plan to write right alongside the girls, for I am not the sort of writer who believes she definitively knows. I'm the sort who keeps trying to find out. Who learns as she teaches, and as she goes.

The class in brief (should you wish to write along...):

Leveraging Involuntary Memory
The Perceiving I
The Hunt for Character
The Fair Release of Story
The Act of Autobiography
Vulnerable Fictions

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins."  ~ Laurie Colwin

 
                       "Ripe Tomatoes" by Robert Duncan, oil on canvas.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
There's only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

I can't get this Guy Clark song out of my head. And ain't it the gosh darn truth?

There's nothing that says summer like homegrown tomatoes. Sure wish we had some.

Oh, we had buckets of them when we lived at our old house. Len had a nice sized vegetable garden, and almost every weekend during the summer, he'd go out and pick a few ruby red beefsteak beauties. He'd slice into one of those sun-warm, smooth, shiny globes to reveal chambers harboring gelatinous seeds. Then he'd let me have first pick of the slices for my sandwich -- sometimes just lightly toasted bread, mayo, a bed of thin cucumber and tomato slices, or if I was feeling the slightest bit frisky, I'd throw caution to the wind and grind on a BLT.

Ah, the rapture!

   

Now that we live in the woods, we don't get enough sun for a garden. Though we buy from roadside stands or farm markets, it's never quite the same as tomatoes freshly picked, minutes old, grown in your own patch of dirt. I don't think there's any other fruit? vegetable? fruit? whose taste and quality varies so greatly between the supermarket and homegrown versions.

A homegrown tomato, or as close as you can get to homegrown, is, dare I say it -- pure poetry.

Just listen to these names -- Purple Haze, Marmande, Juliet, San Marzano, Box Car Willie, Aunt Ruby's German Green. There's even Moneymaker and Mortgage Lifter.

Somewhere, almost everywhere in the world, there is a tomato for all seasons, sensibilities, climates, and culinary uses, to satisfy the most discerning of palates. Without the tomato, there would be no salsa, no Bloody Marys, no barbecue sauce, no ketchup, no gazpacho, no sauce, paste, or puree for pasta. It would mean the demise of Italian cuisine (kill me, already)! Worst of all, I shudder to think, can barely dare to say it, there would be no tomato soup (voted as the writer's favorite in my highly scientific poll). 

*Cue in gratuitious gasping and weeping*

Oh, where, on God's green earth, would I float my alphabets?

Precious pomodoro, forgive us our barbaric finger-pointing, and accept this small yet luminous token of our undying adoration. He is a poet from Chile, born on the continent of your origin.

ODE TO TOMATOES
by Pablo Neruda



The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is 
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.

(Rest is here.)

If you wish to make amends and share your tomato love, check out the East Nashville Art Fest. They are sponsoring a Tomato Haiku Competition (deadline is Monday, August 4th). You are allowed to enter up to 5 haiku, so sip some sauce this weekend and start slicing up those metaphors.

See the world's largest tomato here.

Beautiful examples of tomato art here from the Carmel TomatoFest (scroll down).

To hear the song, "Homegrown Tomatoes," performed by two uber homegrown guitar pickin' scruffy singers, click here.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Well Read Child.

  
             "The tomato: a uniter, not a divider -- bringing together
               fruits and vegetables."

   

This week a friend in the Philippines introducted me to the poetry of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda (how cosmopolitan is the WWW?!) - whose poetry I'd not previously encountered. I particularly like this poem. For some reason the line "I love you as certain dark things are to be loved" makes me think of Shakespeare:


XVII (I do not love you...)

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Translated by Stephen Tapscott


This week the Poetry Friday round-up really IS with Kelly Fineman (I mistook the date last week, so I apologise if I caused any confusion...)

One of the things I love most about poets is their ability to see the beauty in what seems to be the most mundane things. A great poet can make a pile of trash seem fascinating and beautiful just by the way they arrange simple words and rhythm.

Pablo Neruda was a master at this. His gorgeous poem Oda a la cebolla/Ode to an Onion is one of the most beautiful poems in both English and the original Spanish. He makes an onion seem like the most glorious of jewels.

The round up is here.

Oda a la cebolla

Cebolla,
luminosa redoma,
pétalo a pétalo
se formó tu hermosura,
escamas de crystal te acrecentaron
y en el secreto de la tierra oscura
se redondeó tu vientre de rocío.
Bajo la tierra
fue el milagro
y cuando apareció
tu torpe tallo verde,
y nacieron
tus hojas como espadas en el huerto,
la tierra acumuló su poderío
mostrando tu desnuda transparencia,
y como en Afrodita el mar remoto
duplicó la magnolia
levantando sus senos,
la tierra
así te hizo,
cebolla,
clara como un planeta,
y destinada ,
a relucir ,
constelación constante,
redonda rosa de agua,
sobre
la mesa
de las pobres gentes.

Nos hiciste llorar sin afligirnos.
Yo cuanto existe celebré, cebolla,
pero para mi eres
más hermosa que un ave
de plumas cegadoras
eres para mis ojos
globo celeste, copa de platino,
baile inmóvil
de anémona nevada

y vive la fragancia de la tierra
en tu naturaleza cristalina.


Ode to the Onion

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.



translation by Stephen Mitchell

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast has a beautiful idea and both AmoXcalli and Cuentecitos want to be part of it! Head on over to 7 for a look. More on that later.

Stellar poet and La Bloga friend, Martín Espada wil be interviewed on Bill Moyers Journal will be aired on PBS, Friday, July 20th (9 PM EST)--

La Bloga friend and stellar poet, Martín Espada, will be interviewed on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal this Friday, July, 13th. In this revealing interview, Espada talks with Moyers about the inspirations and foundations of his poetry, and the significance of poetry to the world today. And for our conversation with Martín and of review of The Republic of Poetry, go here and here.

Make sure you also visit http://pbs.org/moyers where you can read poems from his latest book The Republic of Poetry, and leave your comments on - http://pbs.org/ moyers/journal/blog

One of the best things about shopping for books in a small, independent children’s book store owned by a former children’s librarian is the quality and the kinds of books displayed on the shelves…and the absence of celebrity titles, Disney versions of fairy tales, and picture books about canines with chronic gastrointestinal disturbances.

Last week, as I browsed around in the Banbury Cross Children’s Book Shop, a book cover caught my eye. Looking closer, I read the title: TO GO SINGING THROUGH THE WORLD. Liked the title. Read the subtitle: THE CHILDHOOD OF PABLO NERUDA. Now how could a poetry lover like me let a book like that sit on the shelf? I picked up the book, settled myself down in one of the shop’s comfy wing chairs, and began reading.

The text of Deborah Kogan Ray’s picture book biography befits a biography about the young life of a great poet: It is well written…and oftentimes lyrical. In illuminating the early life of Neruda, she blends her words with those of the Nobel Prize winner. Neruda’s words and the excerpts from his poems are printed in italics so the transitions in the text’s third person and first person narrations are made clear to readers.

I found this book about the early years of Neruda’s life interesting and informative. Neruda, born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, was raised in the town of Temuco—a pioneer mill town “in the shadow of volcanoes and surrounded by rain forests” in Chile. Neruda’s mother died when he was very young. His stern father, Don Jose, was a railway man who wanted his son to do well in school so he could have a better life. Don Jose married his second wife, Dona Trinidad—who became “the guardian angel” of the poet’s childhood. The young poet was a good listener and liked to hear the “old” stories his stepmother told him about the Mapuche, the native people who were called Indians by the settlers. He listened to the conversations at his father’s table. He was “curious about everyone he met and fascinated by the world around him.”

Deborah Kogan Ray compares the young Neruda to a silent, waiting volcano with fires stirring deep within him. He was shy, self-conscious about his stutter, and “deliberately set himself apart and tried to be different” from the other more “boisterous” boys who often threw acorns at him. He built a protective shell around himself. He lived in a world of books, in the nature of the rain forest that he loved, in the thoughts and images that burned inside him, in the words he was able to write down on paper but not express orally to others.

As Pablo grew—so grew the town in which he lived. He began writing about school events for a small local newspaper. About this time, Gabriela Mistral, a famous poet who later became the first Latin American woman to receive a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1945, moved to Temuco. She was the new principal of the girls’ school. Mistral read the newspaper articles Neruda had written and “was impressed by his fine use of language…” She asked to meet the young man. Mistral became Neruda’s mentor. She gave him books to read, “opened new worlds” to him, and helped to crack the shell that he had built around himself. She encouraged Neruda to open up his heart and to express all the songs that were inside so the world could hear them.

This is a fine book in so many ways. Most importantly, it illuminates the life of a young man who was different from his peers, who didn’t do well in math, who lived in a world he had made for himself, who early on had a passion for stories and words, who had a burning curiosity to find out about the things that lay beyond his town—a young man with fears and desires who, with the love and understanding of a wonderful stepmother and the help and support of a caring and accomplished mentor, grew up to become one the world’s most celebrated poets. TO GO SINGING THROUGH THE WORLD is the kind of picture book biography I recommend to readers of all ages.

The back matter of the book includes Neruda’s poem, Poetry, printed in English and his native tongue, additional information about the lives of Neruda and Mistral, and a chronology of Neruda's life. On the front and back endpapers, readers will find a partial map of South America highlighting the country of Chile, as well as an illustration of the Town of Temuco—circa 1906.

P.S. I bought the book.

TO GO SINGING THROUGH THE WORLD: THE CHILDHOOD OF PABLO NERUDA

Written & illustrated by Deborah Kogan Ray

Published by Frances Foster Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2006)

Pablo Neruda biography at the Nobel Prize Website

Poems by Pablo Neruda at poets.org