#NationalPoetryMonth 30/30

Today’s read: Song Of Protest by Pablo Neruda – Quill – 1985
Foreword and translation by Miguel Algarín

Favorite Algarín line:
I focused my entire attention on New York until I learned to survive. Soon, however, I felt dissatisfied. It was not enough to have the new. I needed a history as well. I needed my memories, and for that I needed Spanish back.
— from “The Politics of Poetry”

Favorite Nerdua line:
I have a pact of love with beauty:
I have a pact of blood with my people.
— from “Do Not Ask Me”

My memories of poetry and Pablo Neruda are deeply intertwined. Neruda was not the first poet I read and I am not sure if he was even the first Spanish language poet that I read. I do know that Neruda was the first poet where the Spanish and English side of the pages actually spoke to each other and I was the voice. I remember picking up a copy of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair for a friend’s birthday. Before gift wrapping the book, I began to thumb through the pages with every intention of just reading the English translations. I then decided to fumble through some Spanish. (I learned to read Spanish as an eight-year-old; a gift from my mother that is its own story) Soon, I was not fumbling through the Spanish. The Spanish, some broken for sure, was coming through me and making sense as sound and feeling. I gave up on reading the English and stayed focused on the Spanish. I was, as Algarín mused, connecting with a history in myself. It was one of my first decolonizing memories made even more impactful by the fact that I did not even know there was such an act as decolonizing.

Neruda continues to impact me as a poet let me about a Neruda biography that details Neruda raping a Sri Lankan woman. This is powerful information and begins a new chapter of my relationship with Neruda. I have met enough poets in my own life to know that great writing does not make for a great person. I am going to be processing a lot on what Neruda means to me with this new information. I am good with reading old poems again and asking new questions.